If only all video games were like this

Play the game now!

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Fun! Fun! Fun! > Bush-a-go-go

From the past > Counting down ...

Whilst you're waiting [for the end], you can while away the hours playing with this game <<

Bush's Boot Camp

Super Obama World

Bounce, Obama! Bounce! Jump! Watch out for the lipsticked pigs!

A violent game addict? You're in the money!

Fresh from Star Now

A national newspaper wants your story and will pay hundreds of pounds to the right person.

Write a few lines about how computer games turned you to crime and if it's something we like, we'll call you straight back.

Please note: To take part, your story must not incriminate yourself or any other person (sic).

Hot on the heels of that leaked Daily Mail email about 'your Polish migrant hell - we'll pay!'

Where's Ofcom when you need it? Nowhere!

Hat-tip Martin Belam

How piracy helps business

Karen Croxson, a Junior Research Fellow in Economics at New College, Oxford, gave a lecture at the Royal Economic Society Annual Conference explaining how software and music piracy can actually help businesses.

While piracy may harm sales, it can also serve to provide free marketing, helping to create ‘buzz’ about a product.

This is product specific and may explain certain protections: console games vs. office software for example.

The unauthorised copying of digital goods such as software, music and films – a practice referred to as ‘digital piracy’ – has been claimed to place in peril the viability of whole industries. With perceived losses running so high, one might expect to see all sellers moving mountains to safeguard their intellectual property technologically. In fact there are some puzzling differences in attitudes.

Piracy can displace sales but highlights the importance of being realistic about this: not every copy implies a lost purchase. In any market there are some who value the product but never would buy (perhaps children with limited pocket money) and their piracy poses no threat to sales.

Given that the cost of piracy is likely to come down to a personal calculation (related to such things as the value of time, fear of penalties and moral costs), there may be variation across markets in the genuine sales threat – the temptation to pirate by those who would otherwise buy.

Croxson using the example of the Arctic Monkeys to explain how valuable 'word-of-mouth' is, although putting a sterling value on this is very hard to do.

The instant success of the music group's first album was due not to traditional marketing muscle but to the energy of early consumers who hyped its songs through social networking site myspace.com.

• Lecture (PDF)
• Karen Croxson
  

Hat-tip: Etre

Bored? Get clicking

Here's another online game which improves your knowledge and helps someone! In this case, you!

How does my answering questions at Answer4Earth help save the Earth?
When you play the game, advertisements appear above the question area. The money generated by these advertisements is then used to plant trees. So by playing, you generate the money that pays for the planting of trees all over the world in a united effort to end Global Warming.

Note: to actually help combat global warming, trees need to be planted in the tropics - Africa, Asia, and Latin America - and that's what the site's partner organisations are doing.

Hat-tip: Tom

Donate rice + improve your English!

Give free rice to hungry people by playing a fun, simple word game!

It has two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site.

FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com.

Diller gives good ankle

Simpsons greenlighter Barry Diller, also college dropout and former William Morris Agency 'mailroom clerk', also Huffingtonpost supporter, gives a great interview to Portfolio:

The internet mogul speaks his mind on videogames, newspapers, and his own style of management.

[He's] managed over the last four decades to position himself at the forefront of whatever has been new in the popular culture.

I guffawed at one point when the very Ivy League looking interviewer, former gossip columnist Lloyd Grove, probing about the extent of Diller's stake in a Games start-up, said:

L.G.: I was going to ask you to show a little ankle on that.

This bit as well, probing about his 'management style':

... the president of Expedia [Dara Khosrowshahi] talking about how it’s generally people sitting around a table shouting at the top of their lungs.

B.D.: Well, he exaggerates ... But with almost every decision, particularly the ones that get tougher and tougher, you don’t have all the information; you’re never going to get all the information; it isn’t there to get. What you’ve got to try and do is listen for what truth you can hear out of the passions of people arguing what they believe in. Because it’s what they believe in when you don’t have the facts, where you can maybe find something that will give you a lead on what’s more interesting to do, what’s the right course to make a decision.

Talking about the Games start-up:

B.D.: The Xbox and the PlayStation—and of course they’re incompatible with each other. And they’re whiz-bang on graphics—they’re beautiful. But on both sides of it—on the equipment side of it that you have to purchase in on, the production side where you make a game—you’re spending huge amounts of money. The Web, as is proven in so many other areas, is a pretty good distribution mechanism for programming. And very few people have done really high-graphic Web games in a system that will have—in InstantAction.com, which is a gathering place both for people who make the games and for viewers to get them—where there’s one easy-to-use, fast place to do pretty sophisticated games. So we think it’s a really original and good idea.

Grove probes him on whether he misses the Hollywood glamour:

L.G.: Some people wonder, just looking in from the outside, they would’ve thought that things like running a movie studio, starting a television network, being an enormous influence on what today is our culture, popular and otherwise, and being responsible for so many things that we just take for granted as part of our daily intake of entertainment, would be much more glamorous and exciting than selling shoes [as with Shoebuy.com]. Or being in the financial-services business [LendingTree.com].

B.D.: Well that would be if you were after glamour. It’s not something I want to be after.... The brilliance of Shoebuy [is that] it is one of the first companies that found out to have a virtual inventory, meaning they have no inventory of their own, what they have figured out is how to get the inventory from hundreds of people who sell shoes in a way that one person can come and access all of it and then get instantly—find out instantly—whether that product is available and buy it instantly. And that’s fascinating to me. Each of the things that we do, we’ll find in there some different, new way of doing things. And that really has interested me since the moment that I kind of got involved in it 13 or 14 years ago. So to the people who say that isn’t making a movie and all of that—I ran movie companies for 20 years. If I wanted to repeat myself, it seems quite boring. It doesn’t seem glamorous to me, it seems repetitive.

LendingTree "will emerge very well" during the current US mortgages crisis, Diller says. But the website being down, small thing though that is, don't bode well. Diller is philosophical.

Talking about the future of newspapers (he's on the Washington Post board):

It’s hard when you use the word newspaper. If you mean news-gathering, or just news, take the paper off, then I’m very hopeful.

So the problem for print is print. I mean, it’s paper, it’s current distribution, and it’s going to be supplanted by other paths. So I’m optimistic about the paths but you certainly can’t be optimistic if you’re running a newspaper.

I think that the work that is done produces value, and it will produce value in the internet and in other forms.

~~~~~~~~

Diller also likes very big yachts "I promise you, it’s not about size, it really isn’t" and is bisexual "[he] did not live as a monk before his marriage [to Diane von Furstenberg, designer and fellow former Studio 54 habitué] at the age of 59".

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Response to COI

Well, to Seb anyhow ;] - [The COI is the Central Office of Information who do big government marketing stuff]

Seb said...

Hi Paul,

Just for clarity I'll repeat these: Firstly, I'd better declare my interest - I work for COI. Very quickly secondly, I had better state that these comments are my own personal views only, not those of COI, but I felt it only fair for readers to know the context of my response.

Clarified! It's easy to forget that this is the public web and given past experience who knows who might take Seb's words out of context to whack not Seb but someone else. Easy to forget when Seb's a colleague in the wider and real sense.

On to Seb's points, in response to my post UK Gov goes backwards on net marketing and comment in Milton Keynes betrays Keynes.

I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say:
The disconnect between their new world and the land of the OPSI's and most politicians is vast and agencies like OPSI and the COI are letting them down.

I think COI are trying to help as much as possible. However, we have little influence and no control over these things. COI has to persuade other government departments to do things, but only if they choose to use us. COI does not have any policy making role in this are or funding to make these things happen (yet?).

<>

The COI has influence, of course. It's been the COI quoted throughout the Facebook episode, that's what I started from.

'Letting them down' was about how the media of choice for youth has now changed so revisit the rules, if necessary, to follow them and be where they are. Otherwise we're letting them down.

I can imagine the embarrassment ahead - in game ads? - and someone needs to start facing the MSM down.

Sorry, it's take a while to get around to responding to this.

Firstly, I'd better declare my interest - I work for COI. Very quickly secondly, I had better state that these comments are my own personal views only, not those of COI, but I felt it only fair for readers to know the context of my response.

So, to my substantive points:
1) don't believe everything you read in the press. There has been a lot of mis-information about this story; although in substance what you link to and state is generally accurate, as I understand it. The Times did rather a hash of it in a later story posted a few days later.

The press is generally crap at reporting these issues. I may have mentioned how they don't challenge and in fact promote ignorance.

2) To say that COI pulled the advertising isn't quite fair. It was only suspended while some question regarding the issues were explored; it was always the intention to re-introduce once satisfactory assurances were made.

That's the point really, what could be a 'satisfactory assurance'? All the options being offered by marketeers are really sticking plasters over the main problem - social networks means different contexts. Plus throw up other potential problems.

3) Tom's report certainly has reached COI. Unfortunately, he doesn't have complete knowledge of the machinations of government and the status of COI. COI on its own cannot do much of what was recommended as we are not funded centrally, like other government departments. We have to convince those central government department to spend their money in ways we recommend, not an easy task - especially in the digital world, which is still typically an after thought last minute thing.

So convince :] More power to you Seb. Your boss? [Let's run that mug shot again] Not so sure.

4) Not all the key players have a good understanding of these technologies as we do. They have to react in a way that our client's wish us to in reaction to concerns raised by press/public. So, while we may understand that context is not the same in digital as it may be in print or on TV our clients and other civil servants don't necessarily. The imperative is to go into damage limitation mode, rather than lose trust in the medium altogether and therefore harm potential future digital communication activity, while we work behind the scenes to persuade and sooth.

So, overall I don't disagree with your post/points, but I don't entirely agree with your angle. I think it is to the benefit of society that we take steps forwards and backwards as necessary to ensure the integrity or the messages we are conveying to the users in all appropriate mediums.

Thanks for "as we do"! I hope to understand at least some but I know technologies have amazing power to transform in a positive way. That I know.

To answer your main point - yes, there is a balance but what's really important is effectively reaching audiences - that's your job.

Thinking 'appropriate mediums', well Games is a challenge and probably a good way to reach certain audiences, certainly it would have more metrics attached than doing Second Life would — but government ads run in titty mags Nuts and Zoo. As they should.

If tabloids and others are making your life difficult your bosses, and that eventually means Ministers should support you, not undermine you. Their public words would tend to suggest they're on your side but not when the Sunday Times/BBC/ScotlandOnSunday have 'exposes' to make.

Andrew Keen booed - and walloped

On the Colbert Report (it follows the Daily Show on Comedy Central):



He gets booed. Can't see him selling many books from that appearance.

Keen asked for advice (on his blog) beforehand.

Anyone have any advice about how to outwit the great Stephen Colbert?

One comments that Colbert actually offers his own advice to guests on his website:

“The best laughs [my guests] can get are through correcting my [character's] stupidity,” Stephen has said. “I think it doesn’t work when they have a joke or two that they’re desperate to say on the show, and then they don’t really actually listen to the conversation. ... They’re waiting to drop the joke in the middle of the interview, and it lands there like conversational plutonium.”

Sounds like Keen listened — he's humourless all right — but still manages to come across as an intellectual snob. No wonder he's getting these US Talk shows — that's one stereotype of Brits.

Commentators on his own blog said he came across as "an elitist", "a simpleton and a jerk", "a complete arrogant elitist", "an arrogant douche", "smug pompous ass", "a bitter talentless hack with a fake british accent", "born out of bitterness", "a stiff Euro no-name", "another cheap whore" and a "grumpy old man".

One said they'd buy the book.

One said:

Sir ... Your entire enterprise, by which I mean your book, this site and above all the arguments you espouse, could only be redeemed if it were, in its entirety, a satirical project.

It's not (ahem) but any 'project' is looking a bit holed below the water. Which is a shame, because Keen's book does raises points which should be discussed. But they're not because of Keen's parade of straw-men. It's the messenger hard-selling his book (and his publishers full-bore oppositionist PR) which is polarising debate.

He's gone back on the provocative book title - "I should have defined amateur more clearly" - and below admits he's beaten in argument. What's left?

Maybe a future with MSM? See here how ABC News backgrounds his comments with clips from their, completely unbiased of course, view of what User Generated Content is.


VS.


On his blog Keen says he was "walloped" by Guardian Unlimited boss Emily Bell in an email exchange this week:

I've finally been nailed. Till now, I think I've come out at least even in all my debates with Web 2.0 boyz like Chris Anderson, Kevin Kelly and David Weinberger. But all good things come to an end. I've finally been outdebated. By a lady -- and an English lady at that.

Keen suffering a touch of the Boris Johnson's.

In my Guardian newspaper debate with Guardian Unlimited's digital supremo Emily Bell, she outwitted me and then took me to the cleaners. My hunch is that I went in a bit cocky, stuck out my chin and got a good walloping. She's a tough bird, that Emily Bell. I'm not debating her again.

A 'lady' and now a 'bird'? Love the macho fighting talk. I'd pay to see Emily actually wallop Andrew.

Speaking of being outwitted and taken to the cleaners, I'm appearing on the Colbert Report this Thursday (8/16). So those of you who want to see me get the mother of wallopings should tune in then. No doubt he'll make me the central comedy on Comedy Central (serves me right for idealizing mainstream media).

Indeed.

Some of Bell's counter-points (my emphases):

The internet challenges us all to up our game - it exponentially increases our audience, but it exposes frailty.

If the internet is so full of amateurish dross then it is no threat to the polished professional - but what you know Andrew, is that it is full of people who are potentially as good as, if not better than, those who have been fortunate enough to reside in a distribution bottleneck - and that is why you are scared.

Thank you for your praise for The Guardian and Guardian Unlimited, but without the internet we would not have reached a worldwide audience of more than 15 million a month. We have an exciting opportunity to invest in journalism for the future and build not just a national but international presence for liberal news and comment. Without the web, our particular future would look extremely different, and not in a good way.

Tell me who, under the age of 25, agrees with your golden ageism arguments? Nobody who grew up with the internet feels your sense of deathly cultural foreboding. Many of them are creating new art forms online which you would shudder at. That's the point. This is their rock 'n roll, and maybe yours has run its course.

I was snagged by your assertion that nobody under 25 had anything to contribute on issues of the new economy or, alarmingly, on Iraq. Or even on anything. I believe Colby Buzzell was 26 when he was posted to Iraq - maybe that extra year gave him the edge - but his blog, and the book that it yielded, My War: Killing Time In Iraq, is certainly more insightful than anything you or I could have written about the conflict.

There are plenty of valid and good reasons for wanting anonymity which I would not presume to question. But it means authenticity might be harder to establish. Or does it? I find myself turning up the authority on technorati searches - but it is not the authority of paid professionals, it is the authority of others who blog in the same area. Take, for instance, the blogroll on Jay Rosen's site: for someone interested in the development of the media it is a goldmine of interesting nuggets. I trust Jay not because he is a skilled academic but because he has blogged for years in an area which I am interested in and have some knowledge of. His posts are informed and attract informed opinion. If an anonymous blogger posts a damaging fallacy, how much resonance does it really acquire? More t

Amateur is not going to fully replace professional - it is idiotic and misleading to suggest it will. But it will supplement and expose mainstream media - in fact it already does.

Postscript: Keen's blog entry about doing the Colbert report.

Those Wikipedia edits in full ...

CalTech graduate student Virgil Griffith built a search tool that traces IP addresses of those who make Wikipedia changes.

WikiScanner is the work of Griffith, 24, a cognitive scientist who is a visiting researcher at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. Mr. Griffith, who spent two weeks this summer writing the software for the site, said he got interested in creating such a tool last year after hearing of members of Congress who were editing their own entries.

Mr. Griffith said he “was expecting a few people to get nailed pretty hard” after his service became public. “The yield, in terms of public relations disasters, is about what I expected.”

Mr. Griffith, who also likes to refer to himself as a “disruptive technologist,” said he was certain any more examples of self-interested editing would come out in the next few weeks, “because the data set is just so huge."

Here's Wikiscanner. It's slow but persist — I found edits done from my work PC (these were legit!).

It has "editor's picks" — showing the latest body to be 'outed' using WikiScanner.

The Independent has helpfully done a round-up of what's been discovered thus far about who's editing Wikipedia.

Exxon Mobil and the giant oil slick
An IP address that belongs to ExxonMobil, the oil giant, is linked to sweeping changes to an entry on the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. An allegation that the company "has not yet paid the $5 billion in spill damages it owes to the 32,000 Alaskan fishermen" was replaced with references to the funds the company has paid out.

The Republican Party and Iraq
The Republican Party edited Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party entry so it made it clear that the US-led invasion was not a "US-led occupation" but a "US-led liberation."

The CIA and casualties of war
A computer with a CIA IP address was used to change a graphic on casualties of the Iraq war by adding the warning that many of the figures were estimated and not broken down by class. Another entry on former CIA chief William Colby was edited to expand his cv.

The Labour Party and careerist MPs
An anonymous surfer at the Labour Party's headquarters removed a section about Labour students referring to "careerist MPs", and criticisms that the party's student arm was no longer radical.

Dow Chemical and the Bhopal disaster
A computer registered to the Dow Chemical Company is recorded as deleting a passage on the Bhopal chemical disaster of 1984, which occurred at a plant operated by Union Carbide, now a wholly owned Dow subsidiary. The incident cost up to 20,000 lives.

Diebold and the dubious voting machines
Voting-machine company Diebold apparently excised long paragraphs detailing the US security industry's concerns over the integrity of their voting machines, and information about the company's chief executive's fundraising for President Bush. The text, deleted in November 2005, was very rapidly restored by another Wikipedia contributor, who advised the anonymous editor, "Please stop removing content from Wikipedia. It is considered vandalism."

The Israeli government and the West Bank wall
A computer linked to the Israeli government twice tried to delete an entire article about the West Bank wall that was critical of the policy. An edit from the same address also modified the entry for Hizbollah describing all its operations as being "mostly military in nature".

The dog breeders and fatal maulings
A dog breeders association in America removed references to two fatal maulings of humans by the Perro de Presa Canario dogs in the US. In 2001 a woman was attacked and killed by two Presa Canario/Mastiff hybrids in the hallway of her apartment building in San Fransisco. Last year a pure-bred Presa Canario fatally mauled a woman in Florida.

The gun lobby and fatal shootings
The National Rifle Association of America doctored concerns about its role in the increase in gun fatalities by replacing the passage with a reference to the association's conservation work in America.

Discovery Channel and guerrilla marketing
A source traced to Discovery Communications, the company that owns the Discovery Channel, deleted reference to company's reputation for " guerrilla marketing".

MySpace and self-censorship
Someone working from an IP address linked to MySpace appears to have been so irritated by references to the social networking website's over-censorial policy that they removed a paragraph accusing MySpace of censorship.

Boeing and a threat to its supremacy
Boeing has made it clear that it is not just one of the world's leading aircraft manufacturers, but is in fact the leading company in this field.

The church's child abuse cover-up
Barbara Alton, assistant to Episcopal Bishop Charles Bennison, in America, deleted information concerning a cover-up of child sexual abuse, allegations that the Bishop misappropriated $11.6 million in trust funds, and evidence of other scandals. When challenged about this, Alton claims she was ordered to delete the information by Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori.

Amnesty and anti-Americanism
A computer with an Amnesty International IP address was used to delete references accusing the charity of holding an anti-American agenda.

Dell computer out-sourcing
Dell removed a passage about how the company out-sourced its support divisions overseas.

Nestle and corporate criticism
Someone from Nestle removed criticisms of some of the company's controversial business practices, which have all subsequently been re-added.

The FBI and Guantánamo
The FBI has removed aerial images of the Guantánamo Bay Naval base in Cuba.

Scientologists and sensitivity
Computers with IP addresses traced to the Church of Scientology were used to expunge critical paragraphs about the cult's world-wide operations. On biography pages for dead celebrities, links were added to articles by a Scientology front group suggesting that pharmaceuticals were responsible for their deaths.

News International and the hypocritical anti-paedophile campaign
Someone at News International saw fit to remove criticism of the News of the World's anti-paedophile campaign by deleting the suggestion that this amounted to editorial hypocrisy. The original entry reminded readers that the paper continued to "publish semi-nude photographs of page three models as young as 16 and salacious stories about female celebrities younger than that."

Oliver Letwin and his great disappearing act
An edit linked to the Conservative Party IP address expunged references to The MP Oliver Letwin's gaffe during the 2001 general election when he reportedly said he wanted to cut "future public spending by fully 20 billion pounds per annum relative to the plans of the Labour government" . The accompanying paragraph, explaining that when his own party failed to support the move he took a low profile on the election campaign, was also removed.

Some more:

• Someone from SeaWorld's owners removed a paragraph about criticism of SeaWorld’s “lack of respect toward its orcas [Killer Wales]”.
• Ebay deletes criticism of Paypal.
• Last year, someone at PepsiCo deleted several paragraphs of the Pepsi entry that focused on its detrimental health effects.
• Someone inside Wal-Mart Stores changed "Wages at Wal-Mart are about 20 percent less than at other retail stores," citing the author Greg Palast as the source, to "The average wage at Wal-Mart is almost double the federal minimum wage", citing Wal-Mart.
• Last year, someone using a computer at the Washington Post Company changed the name of the owner of a free local paper, The Washington Examiner, from Philip Anschutz to Charles Manson.
• A person using a computer at CBS updated the page on Wolf Blitzer of CNN to add that his real name was Irving Federman. (It is actually Wolf Blitzer.)
• Someone at The New York Times Company changed the page on President Bush repeating the word “jerk” 12 times. In the entry for Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, the word “pianist” was changed to “penis.”
• A member of Pope Benedict’s staff changed Gerry Adam’s entry to remove links to newspaper stories written last year that claimed Mr Adams was involved in a double murder in 1971.
• A BBC employee changed US President George W Bush’s middle name from 'Walker' to 'Wanker'.
• Someone from Al Jezeera changed Israel's entry to add: "Jews believe that they are chosen by God and that they are better than other people."
• Someone from the United Nations changed the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci's entry to describe her as a “racist whore.”
• Two Spanish TV stations exposed for performing an 'experiment' on John Lennon and Elvis Presley's entries.
• Games trade association ESA removed references to mod chips which can be used to play pirated game software.
• Apple employees editing the Microsoft page.
  
• Someone using a Connecticut Police computer added " the holocaust is fucking awseome."
• Editors from Christian-right Liberty University deleted the fact that Moral Majority leader and Liberty founder Jerry Falwell was fined in 1987 for illegally transferring funds for his ministry to his political action committees.
• Someone in the South African Government added "'I think that was all bullshit, thats why I deleted it. Thank you motherfucker!" on being discovered editing the HIV/AIDS entry.
• Someone at the ACLU added "during the Pope's final illness, he carried out many of the Pope's functions as leader of the Catholic Church, such as molesting young boys and degrading women."
  
• FoxNews removed references to misquotes, legal brushes, bad ratings, and gaffes by personalities — and, once exposed, responded by attacking Wikipedia's credibility.
  

The only people who seem to have come out clean from Griffith's 'disruptive technology' are Microsoft.

In another blow to Andrew Keen, FoxNews and other anti-Wikipedia credibility types, they are now adding 'nofollow' tags to all outgoing links, thereby destroying Search marketeers attempts to 'game' Wikipedia.

Postscript: According to TechCrunch, Google also come out clean.

World eGov survey · UK 5th

Equatorial Guinea eGov bests France, Japan, Italy and former colonists Spain.


PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University], July 24, 2007 — Asian countries continue to dominate international e-government ratings, taking three of the top four spots in a global e-government study undertaken by researchers at Brown University. South Korea earned the top rank, followed by Singapore, Taiwan, the United States, Great Britain and Canada. The study shows that 28 percent of government agencies around the world are offering online services, about the same as in 2006.

• Report [Pdf 700kb]

Global e-Government: 198 Countries Ranked

Rankings from 1 to 50

RANK COUNTRY RATING 1. (1) South Korea 74.9 (60.3) 2. (3) Singapore 54.0 (47.5) 3. (2) Taiwan 51.1 (49.8) 4. (4) United States 49.4 (47.4) 5. (6) Great Britain 44.3 (42.6) 6. (5) Canada 44.1 (43.5) 7. (48) Portugal 43.8 (31.3) 8. (12) Australia 43.5 (39.9) 8. (27) Turkey 43.5 (33.7) 10. (8) Germany 42.9 (41.5) 11. (7) Ireland 42.4 (41.9) 12. (16) Switzerland 42.3 (36.9) 13. (38) Brazil 41.1 (32.1) 14. (11) Dominica 41.0 (40.0) 15. (65) Bahrain 40.3 (29.6) 16. (40) Equator. Guinea 40.0 (32.0) 16. (32) Liechtenstein 40.0 (33.0) 18. (133) Andorra 39.0 (24.0) 19. (14) New Zealand 38.4 (37.6) 20. (35) Italy 38.0 (32.9) 21. (10) Spain 37.7 (40.6) 22. (20) Hong Kong 37.5 (35.4) 23. (19) Finland 37.3 (35.6) 24. (30) Vatican 37.0 (33.5) 25. (36) Malaysia 36.9 (32.7)

RANK COUNTRY RATING 26. (15) Netherlands 36.8 (37.4) 27. (46) Czech Rep. 36.7 (31.7) 28. (106) Brunei 36.5 (26.8) 29. (84) Cyprus (Rep.) 36.4 (28.3) 30. (40) Liberia 36.0 (24.0) 30. (56) Austria 36.0 (30.6) 30. (17) Azerbaijan 36.0 (36.0) 30. (143) Sierra Leone 36.0 (24.0) 30. (39) Bhutan 36.0 (32.0) 30. (175) Costa Rica 36.0 (20.0) 30. (73) Eritrea 36.0 (29.0) 30. (166) Ethiopia 36.0 (22.0) 30. (137) Gabon 36.0 (24.0) 30. (17) North Korea 36.0 (36.0) 40. (9) Japan 35.9 (41.5) 41. (28) Malta 35.8 (33.6) 42. (23) France 35.6 (34.7) 42. (24) Qatar 35.6 (34.5) 44. (67) Israel 35.5 (29.4) 45. (88) Croatia 35.0 (28.0) 46. (51) Iceland 34.6 (31.1) 47. (77) India 34.2 (28.7) 48. (54) Peru 34.0 (30.8) 48. (150) Zambia 34.0 (23.5) 50. (68) Mexico 33.9 (29.3)

According to Wikipedia, the PM website is the closest to a Japanese national government portal.


Common services include voter registration, visa application, passport application/renewal, job listings and online application, and requests for statistical reports.

Online tax filing was very prevalent, and was found on the Belgian Portal Site, the Pakistani Customs site, the Philippine Portal, and the French Economic Ministry.

Many departments offer online complaint forms. For example, the Malaysian Portal site has links to many of these forms. The Netherlands has a dedicated site for their Ombudsman, which accepts online complaint submissions. The New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs lets you complain about the presence of “objectionable material”. Several Philippine sites, such as the Portal page, Armed Forces, and Public Works have complaint forms. The South African Public Protector has an online complaint form.

Applying for and renewing licenses and permits is another common area where services are offered. The Mauritius Portal lets you apply for work permits and learner’s licenses and the New Zealand Economic Development website lets you renew an electrical workers or radio license. Many departments allow you to apply for government jobs online, including the New Zealand Portal.

Many sites allow you to order publications, including the Slovenia Tourism Board, South African Department of Environment & Tourism, Australian Portal site, Slovakia Industrial Property site, and the Swiss Intellectual Property Institute.

Several sites allow users to apply for grants online, including the New Zealand portal and U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Various websites allow for electronic document filing. The New Zealand portal lets you file various corporate documents (including annual returns). The Slovakia Industrial Property uses a digital signature system to enable its e-filling of documents. The Swiss Intellectual Property Institute offers the ability to file trademark applications through “e-Trademark” The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has the EDGAR Service, which allows for the online filing of 116 different forms.

Several sites are unique in their attempt to encourage electronic government.

The Swiss Intellectual Property Institute offers the “e-Trademark” service to help file trademark applications, and the fees for electronic filing are less than those for submitting paper copies. The Slovakia Industrial Property also offers online filing of documents for reduced fees online.

Several countries offered unique online services. The Republic of Congo offers a means to send SMS text messages from its site, for a fee. The New Zealand Portal and Conservation site allow online booking of huts and campsites in national parks. The Australian Toilet Map found at the National Continence Management Strategy lets you browse and pinpoint public toilets throughout Australia and see toilets along a planned route. Visitors can suggest additions to the toilet database.



Uluru .. There are 5 nearby toilets:

The Philippine Portal offers a link to an online betting site for basketball games run by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation. The Luxembourg Education Ministry has a link to its mySchool Portal where students can take online classes and tests and receive help with homework.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Administration allows users to search the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System database for case studies of injuries to people by consumer products. Mexico’s Ministry of the Economy site has an online “conversation forum” available to visitors where you can have an instant message conversation with agency officials.

Colombia’s Ministry of Education allows users to elect to erase all cookies placed on their hard drive periodically as they log in with their username and password. Guatemala’s Ministry of Agriculture site has a webshots.com page embedded in their government web page that shows albums documenting the programs they put on and their service projects.



NUEVO - Fotos Proyectos

Turkey’s Portal has webcams of streets and squares all around the country on a live feed via the internet. Peru’s Portal site has an interactive online video that shows a mouse clicking on different things and what each click would accomplish plus a tutorial showing how to navigate pages while a voiceover explains the different services.

Ecuador’s President site has a youtube.com website with videos and an entire user profile for the President of the country. Czech Republic’s Portal site has a new “Did you know?” fact at the top of each page. The page contains a unique “conversation bubble” theme that allows for links to interesting services and a “quick review” that gives current time and date, weather, and exchange information at a glance.

India’s Department of Commerce site holds regular online chat sessions, with pre-designated topics either a few times a week or daily for one hour. They broadcast the topics and their schedule on a scrolling banner at the top of the webpage for every visitor to see.

OnLine Chat Date : 20 Nov 2006

On 'Special Economic Zones Policy' on every working day between 17.00 - 18.00 Hrs | "Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs)" on Monday, Tuesday between 11 AM and 12 Noon | "WTO(Doha Round of Negotiations)" on Thursday, Friday between 11 AM and 12 Noon

One feature that has slowed the development of online services has been an inability to use credit cards and digital signatures on financial transactions. On commercial sites, it is becoming a more common practice to offer goods and services online for purchase through the use of credit cards.

However, of the government websites analyzed, only 5 percent accept credit cards and 1 percent allowed digital signatures for financial transactions, similar to last year.

For our test, we used the Priority Level One standard and evaluated each government agency regarding whether it complies with the W3C guidelines. Sites are judged to be either in compliance or not in compliance based on the results of this test. According to our Bobby [sic] analysis, 23 percent of government websites are accessible to the disabled, the same as last year.

Disability Access
2004 2005 2006 2007
14% 19% 23% 23%

The most basic means to ensure accessibility is to maintain compliance with WWC standards. However, there now exist other ways to aid accessibility. Many sites how allow users to change the size on the text, to accommodate those with poor eyesight. Other pages have applications that will read the entire page to the user. The most extreme example of this trend can be seen on the Swedish Government Portal (
http://www.sweden.gov.se/), which not only will read to page to you, but lets you
customize the text size, spacing, and coloring. Advances in technology have made these types of aids possible, and government website should begin implementing them In order to improve electronic government, the report suggests that governments take several steps to reach their full potential in terms of accessibility and effectiveness. The ultimate goal of e-government is to provide citizens with services, information, and interactive features. To this end, sites need to be well-designed, easy to navigate, and accessible to a wide variety of users.

The researchers suggest the following steps be undertaken:

• standardize templates with consistent navigation;
• have accessibility aids;
• list when pages are updated;
• organize pages by user type;
• create “most popular” lists;
• have an online services menu;
  
• have interactive technical assistance;
• make it interesting!
• avoid commercial advertising;
• fix faulty links;
• improve language accessibility;
• do not sell domain names; and
  
• have a secure and stable server.
  
  
  

The CNN/YouTube Presidential debate

Quite an historic event this week, with the CNN/YouTube joint Democratic Presidential candidate debate.

MSM certainly took note. As the Chicago Tribune's Steve Johnson put it, "it was a bad night for news anchors and Washington bureau chiefs, the traditional interrogators of would-be holders of American high office."

Carol Darr, Director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, said that for the first time, “the filter that mainstream establishment media plays in presidential races — ‘we ask the questions, we are the exalted panel’ — that was broken down.”

Jon Stewart introduces and sets the tone ...



"Video size is important to the debate .. only young people can see it."

And more from Jon Oliver — did CNN 'youthenize' the debate? ...



Note the 'Al qaeda' drinking game ..

TechPresident summed up the reactions.

It brought home the hollowness of much of our scripted political speech, since those candidates who could break through the rhetoric and talk with a human voice really stood out

And Huffpost has a good dissection of what actually happened - they followed the questioners.

YouTube themselves described the new debate format as “more democratic than ever.” Apparently, YouTube founder Chad Hurley is hot for Obama (as are a lot of Google employees).

And — this has got to be a good sign — White House Press Secretary Tony Snow asked 'Did [Bush] watch the debate?' answered 'I don’t think so. I don’t think he’s big on YouTube debates'.

Andrew Keen - he of 'The cult of the amateur', which bangs on about Wikipedia being unreliable - took a hit as many videos from the 'amateurs' were very well produced or showed the sort of cunning approach journalists have by picking a hole they figured producers would need to fill.

This is what young guy John Cantees did in addressing a candidate everyone else would ignore.

Though another way of looking at it is that the process ends up sounding not dissimilar to that employed by Endermol to fill the BigBrother House.

CNN didn't just "pick the questions." They identified contributors and in some cases worked with them to shape the video.

Huffpost:

If the whole point of the exercise was to hear from citizens, it just shows how hard it is to displace the spirit of professionalism with another spirit-- even when one is trying.

And although there was a first - one woman on the stage - only 11 of 39 questions were from women - 70% were from men.

At this early stage, it's hardly surprising that videos like this one about Alzheimer's gets in — only 3000 video questions were submitted.



Noted that the documentation by YouTube is terrible. Here's that question on YouTube — see if you can find the answer here (it's the one below), on YouTube's main recap page. (The question was actually mashed in with others). One thing I've noticed recently as YouTube iterates its design is the navigation getting stripped too far back, so you get too much simplicity and too little complexity.

NB: and yes, you are reading CNN host Anderson Cooper right ..

POSTSCRIPT: Apparently, the Republican candidates think it's silly and that their base don't watch YouTube, so they aren't signing up for their version in September. The WashPost quotes Mitt Romney saying "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman." Republican blogger Andrew Sullivan says: "Ducking YouTube after the Dems did so well will look like a party uncomfortable with the culture and uncomfortable with democracy. But then, we kind of knew that already, I guess, didn't we?"

Bytes · MS dev roundup - Blogging eGov boost - Wikinomics

• Etre sums up some of the most interesting recent MS developments:
  
  · A speech recognition browser (TellMe)
  ...Say the word "Microsoft" and you'll be transported to www.microsoft.com.
  · A 1d barcode scanner (AURA)
  Snap a photo of a normal barcode using your phone, send it to Microsoft and they'll return you the product's info.
  · A 2d barcode scanner and software suite (Windows Live Barcode)
  Snap a photo of a Quick Response Code barcode using your phone, send it to Microsoft and they'll return you the product's info.
  · A mobile image recognition engine (Lincoln)
  A product that allows people to search the internet via their mobile phone camera (for example, users might snap pictures of movie posters or DVD covers to receive movie reviews via the web.
  · An RFID browser (in collaboration with Symbol)
  Technology built into your mobile phone that allows you to scan products with RFID tags and navigate to their associated websites for product information.
  · A colourful 2d barcode
  A new barcode standard, allowing identification of commercial audio-visual works such as motion pictures, video games, broadcasts, digital video recordings and other media.
  
  
  
• Opera has released a new version with an updated 'speed-dial':
  

  "Similar to Speed Dial on Opera Mini (a version of Opera designed for mobile phones), where you can quickly access your top 9 bookmarked sites by simply pressing '*' with the bookmark number on the phone keypad (i.e. *1), the desktop browser allows you to use CTRL+1 to CTRL+9 for the top 9 sites. In addition, these bookmarked sites will also be shown in a thumbnail preview on blank tabs. Clicking on the thumbnail preview brings you to the site."

  
  
• Australian eGov Minister Gary Nairn spoke up for blogging at CeBit in Sydney this week:
  
  

  An area of web 2.0 technology we are evaluating is Government web-logs or blogs. For example, I may establish an e‑Government blog.
  
  Blogs offer another means for government to seek feedback from citizens on major programs or topics of interest to Australians.
  
  Blogs could speed up consultation and enable the Government and other citizens to analyse and debate issues in reasonable detail. This could then lead to more informed policy and program development.
  
  Blogging could lead to a new era of community interaction – not just between government and citizens – but between citizens.
  
  For example, Australians in the cities might learn more about life in the bush or on farms – from people that live there.
  
  Likewise the blogs and other ICT enabled communication tools may allow our rural population feel closer to city dwellers.
  
  While blogs present much potential we are not waiting to realise this enhanced interaction between citizens and government.
  
  We have already established pubic [SIC — See. It does say 'pubic' on the Australian Government's website, common typo which is apparently worth $$$$
  ] consultation systems through australia.gov.au.
  
  Australia.gov.au facilitates public consultation with a range of agencies including:
  
  * The National Health and Medical Research Council;
  * The Office of the Access Card, and
  * The Office of the Privacy Commission, just to name a few.
  
  We are making progress!

  
  
  
• Federal Computer Weekly has an interesting interview with ‘“Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything”’ author Don Tapscott.
  
  

  In Neighborhood Knowledge Los Angeles, you’ve got three pillars — business, government and civil society — working together to create something that didn’t exist ...
  
  .... you’re got a map of Los Angeles that changes as the data changes and communities start to show problems. Groups can intervene before problems grow into crisis situations. This is about delivering services that did not previously exist. We’re in the early days of some really big changes in terms of how we create new services .....
  
  
  
  
  Search of Neighbourhood Knowledge CA showing LA census data.
  
  
  
  
  
  Search of similar UK National Statistics website (it crashed my browser!)
  
  
  ... we’ve come up with 18 themes of democracy in the digital economy, and one of them is digital brainstorming. It’s a baby step toward a new model of democracy. By the time you publish this article in May, it will have been publicly announced that one of these sessions will be held in Canada. It’s going to happen in the fall. There will be a three-day discussion among all citizens of Canada. I’m involved in advising them on how to do it ...
  
  
  ... the biggest problem is that old paradigms die hard. And the way companies are getting into trouble today is not by moving too fast into mass collaboration. In industry after industry, you can see the old model being eclipsed by the new model. So the stakes are high for governments to somehow find the leadership to bring about similar change.

• Still with Wikis, the National Archives has launched one called Your Archives. It is a virtual community where people can contribute their content and share their knowledge of archival sources held by The National Archives and by other archives throughout the UK.
  
  
• More on Wikis. Tapscott collaborator Anthony Williams reports that:
  

  Wharton Business School is teaming up with MIT’s Sloan School of Management to publish the first full-fledged business management book to be written Wiki style. It’s called We Are Smarter Than Me (fall 2007) and the project is spearheaded by Barry Libert, cofounder of WeAreSmarter.org and CEO of Shared Insights. Libert hopes he can extend the project to develop a series of wiki-books on management and community. So far 900 people have signed on to be part of the networked book collaboration, but Libert wants up to 2 million potential authors to get involved. Visit the website if you’d like to pitch in.