I posted recently about mobile developments in Africa and how they are being used in a number of imaginative ways - many of which which we're yet to see in the 'West'!
As well as being used to organise day labour they're also used by people to do small jobs such as translations. In Kenya, with its many languages, this is how help resources for mobile companies' customer services are being built - word-by-word
It derives its name from the word sama, Sanskrit for “equal”.
Their partners must meet stringent social impact criteria - fewer than 20% of applicant firms are selected - and they specialize in services ranging from data entry to advanced software and website development.
It's about giving work, not aid to people in the world's poorest countries.
Here's a profile of Ann Wangui, a graduate with honors from Nairobi's Methodist University. She is an example of the sort of person who is struggling to find a job in Nairobi despite her qualifications and who Samasource aims to help.
If Microsoft developer communities do emerge in Africa, Erik writes, even with the massive hurdle of paying for expensive access to developer tools, "we’re still left with what one person wrote: …they will be formed from programmers who are completely dependent on American software for the livelihood: it’s neo-colonialism, pure and simple."
In Africa organizations have a lot of hurdles to overcome, not least of which is the straight cost of doing business. Where it might be simple for some organizations in the US and Europe to wave off a couple thousand dollars worth of licensing fees, the same is not true in Africa. The margins are lower, so every cent counts.
In a region where cost is so important, it’s amazing then that the most lucrative deals go to the Western organizations that have high costs for ownership and maintenance. These outside organizations use backdoor methods to gain contracts where in-country options are available, usually with less expense and with greater local support.
Hersman also reports that Microsoft are trying to muscle in on the African-developed Ushahidi crisis reporting social software with a new product called Vine. He says "if they really are about creating emergency and disaster software for use by normal people, then I would encourage them to not charge for it and to make it as open as possible for others to work with it."
Guardian reports today that the giant Greenland glaciers are, as feared, melting more quickly.
The predicted rise this century was 20-60cm (about 8-24ins) , but it would be at the upper end of this range at a minimum, and some believed it could be two metres. This would be catastrophic for European coastlines. Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, said in Ilulissat, Greenland yesterday:
"We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at 2 metres an hour on a front 5km [3 miles] long and 1,500 metres deep."
"seen gigantic holes in it through which swirling masses of melt water were falling. I first looked at this glacier in the 1960s and there were no holes. These so-called moulins, 10 to 15 metres across, have opened up all over the place. There are hundreds of them."
This melt water was pouring through to the bottom of the glacier creating a lake 500 metres deep which was causing the glacier to float on land.
"These melt-water rivers are lubricating the glacier, like applying oil to a surface and causing it to slide into the sea. It is causing a massive acceleration which could be catastrophic."
The glacier is now moving at 15km a year into the sea although in surges it moves even faster. He measured one surge at 5km in 90 minutes - an extraordinary event.
Religious leaders from all over the world met at the mouth of the Illulissat last week to say a silent prayer for the planet, appealing to mankind to address the impact that humanity is having on life on Earth.
Christian, Shia, Sunni, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist and Jewish religious leaders took a boat to the tongue of the glacier for a silent prayer for the planet. They were invited by Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of 250 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.
NASA: Fastest Glacier in Greenland Doubles Speed Greenland Ice Changes Since 1990's: This visualization of laser altimeter measurements from the mid 1990's shows overall thinning of Greenland's ice sheet, with thickening in a few locations including the Jakobshavn Glacier, where the ice stream slowed down in the mid 1990s. More recent data show that the Jakobshavn is now, in fact, retreating, and causing accelerated thinning of adjacent ice at higher elevations in a manner that is consistent with its acceleration. Cool colors represent areas of thinning ice while warm colors show thickening. Slight inland thickening is attributed to accumulation of atmospheric moisture from melting ice at the coasts, supporting observations of a greater net loss to the overall sum of Greenland's ice cap. (6.7 MB). Credit: NASA
NB: First try with new Blogger video upload. Quick and easy but there's no way to share video and it's not indexed by Google Video. Also not allowing resizing, unlike YouTube.
Another NASA Jakobshavn Glacier animation
EU Video 'Living with climate change' about glacier retreat in the Alps, sea level rise (good bye Netherlands) and changing tourism patterns (bye bye Med, hello Baltic)
Public Sector Forums, which is a .gov.uk only forum, goes gangbusters today on one "wheeze" from the local council website (aka 'take-up') publicity campaign, run out of Whitehall [their bold]:
Take-Up Campaign's Accessibility-Busting Web Poll
[Whitehall's] 'Connect to Your Council' Take-Up Campaign is set to unleash its latest wheeze to get punters flocking to council websites: A national online competition to find England's 'favourite local attraction'.
The Pride of Place' poll, due to launch in a few weeks' time, will be accessed via council websites thus – so the thinking goes - 'raising awareness' of local authority online services.
The Campaign's PR agency, the Central Office of Information-owned Government News Network, are co-ordinating the nationwide poll. The GNN are in the throes of writing to every council urging them to do their bit and promote the poll prominently on their websites.
Unfortunately, the bad news is that web poll created by the Take-Up Campaign fails to comply with even the most basic web accessibility guidelines, having been purposely designed in a way which makes it impossible for certain users to access.
PSF point out some other problems with the Poll, which all sound fixable, such as use of Pop-Ups and lack of a link to another route to voting. [The latter is easy but easy to forget. We've added alternates to Google Maps page's content as we've discovered issues for some.]
It doesn't sound like a brilliantly executed Widget. Most notably, as PSF finds:
The guidance prepared for councils notes that "participants will be able to vote more than once" but "if possible votes will be limited to one per session to stop frivolous multiple votes". Very interesting...
But the biggest gap is missed — only council websites are being used (promoted to), as far as I can see. Thus missing the most obvious use for widgets. It's very unclear what possible reason there might be stopping making this more widely available - there's nothing to stop anyone using the code, although I'd be reluctant to use a unnecessary pop-up.
It's just like other netmarketing campaigns. Earlier this year Hasbro through Monopoly ran one in the UK as they have elsewhere, making use of town pride. They didn't have a widget though, so we had to plug it in other ways on our council site. Got lots of hits!
With accessibility, this is an acknowledged problem with Web 2.0, given the reliance on JavaScript and the lack of proper tools.
Thoughtfulness - alternative routes to voting - and engagement with your audience helps but there are basic issues which yelling doesn't fix. This blog tool, for example, could easily build in accessibility fixes to authoring tools. They haven't.
None of this should stop Web 2.0 and can't. PSF's tone suggests some think it should. Widgets can be made more accessible so advocates should talk to industry if they aren't already. If a provider advertises themselves as 'accessible' or at least being inclusive and making real efforts, people should flock there.
And notice that they're saying in a section on Google that:
As in phase two of activity, relevant Google key-words will be purchased for the duration of phase two of the Campaign. Keywords are used to target the Campaign home page to potential customers who enter relevant search terms and improve advertising performance accordingly by making www.direct.gov.uk/mycouncil a top Google search listing.
In terms of overall Campaign strategy, it is recognised that the majority of referrals to council websites come from Google. This is reflected in the low key approach adopted for Campaign branding, with creative executions designed to:
• make councils the 'heroes' of the advertising; • create a call to action; • build the association between councils and the services represented; • Communicate the online message.
I don't understand exactly what they mean here except that there's no branding or creativity in your keywords ads! But this should give notice that in key areas Council landing pages connected to certain terms may have some traffic redirected.
A lot of councils (most definitely not all) are #1 on key terms right now. So what are those terms? Would help stop double-bidding for one thing.
I've posted before about the issue of fine-tuning with keywords bidding.
And it turns out I can now actually ask these sorts of questions directly as those responsible for the 'Take-Up campaign' can now be addressed directly! In public space! Sort of!
Very discreetly on Monday the Department for Communities and Local Government rolled out it's new 'Have Your Say' web 2.0/social networking/most of the shebang website (yes, there's a tagcloud).
It's public facing and according to the - hard-to-find, more later - instructions posts will be read by civil servants. And responded to. It appears they mass signed up circa 2500 of the lucky 'policy officers' straight off and they appear to have added another 1000 users since yesterday.
We value your opinions and undertake to publish all comments, so long as they do not break the discussion rules outlined in our terms and conditions. Please ensure that you read the terms and conditions before posting a message. All comments you post on this site will be read by relevant policy officials, who will also take part in each debate.
Please note: That some topics will run for a specified time period and then close. Closed topics will remain available to read in our archive.
'Famine to feast' as I just emailed. It's not really a forum for other government web workers to talk to them through, although we could.
The introduction doesn't say that it's just for one class of people, so how the civil servants actually cope if it takes off like the Number Ten petitions, I'm not sure. It appears to be a fairly generic and 'beta' terms and conditions/introduction and use will change it to be much clearer on how contributions actually work.
It's not 'about us' and the only way to find it is via the 'home' link, which only appears on the Forums pages. This adds to my impression of it being kindof out-of-the-box web 2.0. Not properly introduced or explained but all working and well-styled.
It's a very good start and worth noting that very few other governments are doing this that I'm aware of.
They promise wikis and more and have one blog they're hosting thus far, which leads to a very good Olympics Authority blog which looks and acts like a blog and has got top brass contributing.
Lastly in egov Whitehall vs. local government updates, their advice on usability and other basics for web workers is finally available again, a simple lack of a redirect blocked it for many months.
It's a bugbear of mine when smaller governments manage to provide their hard-pressed and under-resourced web workers with proper advice and help. As far as I can tell, this is all Whitehall has planned for UK workers and it's already partly out of date plus the attitudes on display are distinctly unhelpful.
It's instructive that despite top-down, much publicised instructions to cull public websites in the name of 'transformation', web workers are offered endless specialist sites and forums, most of which have no traffic, a fair few of which are abandoned, defunded, and endless 'help' which is really aimed at bean-counters and bureaucrats and not the front-line.
The FAQ answering the question posed by amongst others me — Whilst accessibility requirements and guidelines are well documented there seems to be very little information available regarding usability. Can you please give some authorative [sic] sources for usability requirements and guidelines? — is really bad. Usability is essential to anything claiming to be 'customer-focussed' and about 'transformation' and the entire tone is take-it-or-leave-it.
The answer, written by Nomensa I assume, a usability company contracted by Whitehall, claims that: "no usability guideline is black and white, and the context and users have to be taken into consideration."
Whoever wrote this has a vested interest, pushing their expertise— are they really saying that someone like Jakob Nielsen doesn't make basic, apply to all, guidance? That ordinary web workers have nothing to learn from Nielsen or any of the others in my links list? That only filtered and packaged government-approved usability guidance is kosher?
This goes to the heart of the problem about our alleged specialness as websites ... leading people to believe that norms don't apply to them because they're an egov site is a big mistake.
"Other guidelines will tend to be generic, i.e. unhelpful and potentially open to a great deal of interpretation for someone without usability expertise.
I think the best advice is to use the CDs provided and come back to the helpdesk to fill in any gaps or answer any remaining questions."
You come back to me, darling. If our guidance isn't usable is confusing you. Can't do anything yourself, you need the professionals. You'd think they were selling used cars ...
Here's a link to my presentation about how, yes, YOU can do some of this yourself. The use of Homer Simpson on the first slide is very deliberate.
Postscript: Doh! I've posted about SlideShare several times - here's the presentation using SlideShare! n.b. some images have been lost in the translation.
The Central Office of Information (COI) has decided to pull all its government advertising from social networking sites.
They are currently running armed forces ads via YouTube and have used MySpace and Bebo before.
This follows the latest beat-ups on the Web from MSM (MainSteam Media). This time it's the Sunday Times, linking brands to the BNP via Facebook. Vodafone, First Direct, Halifax, Prudential, Virgin Media and the AA have deserted Facebook. eBay have not.
Plus the BBC's increasingly ridiculous primetime ratings-chaser Panorama criticized YouTubefor refusing to police so-called 'happy slapping' videos, and damned Peugeot and Carphone Warehouse. [The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) called Panorama 'misleading', I'd call it a very good example of the worst sort of tabloid TV.] And Teachers' Unions want the Internet banned.
A lot of bellowing, confused people all sounding like they want the whole thing stopped and for us all to live in somewhere censored and filtered and quiet - like China? Sites are changing content because of this (as they would).
[Register comment]: I work for a large uk website that is made of user generated content.
Our media provider (who serves the ads) has asked us to pull various bits of content and retire entire sections of the site to please the advertisers.
Thank you Panorama, are you the Taliban-wing of the BBC? I notice that News Online is undermining your argument again (see 'Cyber bullying - don't blame the web'), as they did over WiFi.
We don't want to exclude use of any of the new social media but we do have to have a very clear idea of what the context is going to be like.
When the newspapers will spend lots of energy trying to place you in ANY negative context — see what the Mail did to 'Whitehall blogger' Owen Barder, taking comments out of context for example — this strikes me as plain wrong and naive.
Also reminded of much of what Tom Steinberg wrote in his recent report (for the government, most of which was accepted), The Power of Information.
Appears to have not reached the COI.
Effective government net marketing — hence 'reaching youth audiences through social networks' for example — is never going to happen unless someone gets some backbone and stands up to press/TV luddites. Someone like a politician.
Is it not slightly irresponsible not to go where the kids actually are?
It is just not possible to effectively use social media without something, somewhere which can be taken out of context.
Register: After extensive investigations, The Register can reveal that Vodafone rival Orange's adverts are running on the [Facebook] group "Aryan Satan Worshipers" [sic]. Sick.®
So change the context. It really, really needs it. The 'debate' is ridiculously ill-informed (see Panorama comments).
The commentators on the Guardian about the BNP/Facebook [Racists don't just read online ads] have no information about Web marketing, social networks etc. for which I blame the BBC, in large part.
How is this country's economy going to get anywhere if both politicians taking advantage and tabloid media are dominating the 'debate' and scaring people witless about the Web?
Some would like to change the context to this:
[blog comment]: NEW ad serving engines are appearing from companies like wunderLoop that are based not on the context of a sites content but on the indivdual and their behaviour, so that advertising appears related to their profile.
Do YOU want to be graded, profiled, judged and then your platform support withdrawn because you don't fit advertisers desires?
[blog comment]: I don’t think a filter system would do too well on social networks. Just imagine - if you knew there were certain trigger words or phrases to stop ads from being displayed on your profile, how easy would it be for people who don’t want ads on their profiles to include those so they get a commercial free profile?
It's very interesting that practitioners were also spooked by the gathering tabloid storm and rushed to say 'we will regulate online ad networks'. Although the American reaction to the BNP/Facebook furor has largely been bewilderment. But you can't have user-generated content + ads without some content or 'context' clanging up against something that someone doesn't want to see/hear. That's 'users' (the public) for you.
Nigel Gwilliam, senior communications manager at the IPA: Online ad networks need to address the issue of trust they now face and our view is that independent, random, campaign level audits are the best solution. In the mean time, agencies need to be vigilant when trading with networks, particularly with regard to high volume, low CPM deals.
If advertisers are nervous, they can speak directly to us and we will make sure their advertising does not appear against user-generated content pages, or against any political parties. The best way is to come directly to us.
You either advertise/engage with 'user-generated content pages' or you don't. MySpace just said that.
It's not possible to filter it to meet the likes of the COI's very strict rules and guidelines.
Context is Content: The ability to connect anything to anything else online continues to challenge standards and practices.
So if you jump like this every time some - frankly - lateral link is made in the newspapers or tabloid TV, effective use of social media is just never going to get off the starting blocks.
The ballpark, the gameplan, the inventory, the master plan .. you've got to change the argument, the context to make real use of social media.
COI has adopted more modern techniques in recent years but we think there is scope to go further. We want to make sure that it moves more fully into the YouTube and MySpace era.
The RAF YouTube page is currently running video diary entries from the front line in Kandahar.
[SAC Paul Goodfellow] is careful not to endanger the lives of others or include any breach of intelligence, but will speak openly about his day-to-day experiences as a gunner in the RAF.
Although I think ads can be controlled on their YouTube page, Paul's RAF diary is sharable - I just did this and it's below. Which means - yes - the BNP could use it the same as I am. Does that one possibility damn what is evidentially a good thing for the RAF?
RAF AFGHAN DIARIES: 10th July 2007
I don't think COI chief executive Alan Bishop has thought this one through:
We don't want to exclude use of any of the new social media but we do have to have a very clear idea of what the context is going to be like.
After sleeping or spending time with family, the Internet is women’s favorite leisure activity (Yahoo/Starcom report 2005). But women surf around less than men: they like to frequent trusted sites and communities. This is important for campaigns to remember.
Even females who don’t self-describe as “political” organize and raise money: A recent survey by BlogAds.com found that of the “mommy” blog readers surveyed, 46% have contributed to a cause or campaign.
Women talk differently online: "This is a huge generalization, but men use the blogosphere as a podium, e.g., 'This is what I think.' Women use it as a dialogue," Janet Eden-Harris, Internet firm Umbria's CEO, recently told the Denver Westword News. "The number of words that women use on a blog far exceeds that of men," she said. More later this week…
Anyone who follows politics knows this: For 40 years, more women than men have voted in elections .
<>
As women go, so will the White House, which is why it is important to cover not only what campaigns and organizations are doing online to sway women voters, but also to observe what women say and do in their own networks, blogs, and online communities.
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Dave Briggs points me in the direction of docstoc.com
Similar in concept to Flickr.com (for photos) and YouTube.com (for videos) Docstoc.com will be the online community for sharing all types of documents.
Our aim is to prove that London is the most cosmopolitan city in the world, by endeavouring to meet and chat to a citizen from every country in the world who currently lives and works in London.
Altogether, more than 300 languages are spoken by the people of London, and the city has at least 50 non-indigenous communities with populations of 10,000 or more. Virtually every race, nation, culture and religion in the world can claim at least a handful of Londoners.
What the maps don't show Factfile: Tower Hamlets has the lowest proportion of ethnic Indians of any London borough; 5.1% of Kensington and Chelsea's populatino are Americans. And many more facts and figures.
Sydney Morning Herald: The YouTube election That's John Howard on the right and ALP leader Kevin Rudd on the left
· The educational sector is pretty communal, there’s lots of sharing of ideas and word of mouth, so plenty of organic growth. · It’s a very large, well defined sector that will create a large user base very quickly. · Most importantly, what do we trust most as users? We trust what we know. As human beings, we don’t typically like change. When we’re getting educated, we use the tools we’re presented with because we don’t know anything else. When we leave education, we want to use those same tools that we’re comfortable with.
This strategy, often called ’seeding’, produces exceptional results in the medium to long term, but you need a lot of funding to survive the investment period (like Google, for example).
The videowall aggregates all the latest YouTube videos about the ‘08 candidates in a full screen total immersion experience. I’ve found it very useful in tracking down debate clips, anonymous oppo hits, and other cool stuff I’ve missed. Voter generated content is mixed in with media clips and official candidate videos to provide a 360 degree view of the campaign.
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You come back to me, darling. If our guidance 
