| Dina Mehta: Social Tools Social Networks |
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Description: Social Tools and Social Media - Conversations with Dina
Last Update: 09:44:02 03/05/2006
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First Fetched: 00:16:26 01/31/2004
Last Updated: 09:44:02 03/05/2006
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Last weekend at Khandala, there were many birds in the trees that I couldn't recognise and put a label to. I wished my dad was there - he probably knows every species. As I was about to doze off this afternoon, I remembered one such bird I did manage to capture in a not-so-clear photograph. Made me think, and I know it might sound crazy, but what fun if I could place an image or audio clip into a search box, which returned a whole host of links (like they do with text) that matched the image or audio clip. Is anything like this available today - i just read about Podzinger ... interesting ... but this is different. Hmmm.
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Notable quotes on youth lives online :"My generation draws the Internet as a cloud that connects everyone; the younger generation experiences it as oxygen that supports their digital lives." [Kevin Marks, epeus epigone blog, via Susan Mernit] "The young will read anything on the internet. More so, they get their information from their peers rather than from the press. That means from blogs. These blogs may not be objective bastions of news reportage, but they do speak to the youth in a way few mediums ever do. Its like learning about the world or the country from ones buddies." [Sushila Ravindranath, Newindpress, link via Sambharmafia]"Many teens are frustrated by the press' account of their behavior, but they have no voice. They are frustrated by their parents' fear, but they have no power. Parents are scared, and their fear is misguided. There are more actions against minors in San Francisco on a daily basis than there have ever been in the 3-year history of MySpace. More and ...
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Now .... advertising on podcasts. "The podcasting landscape still remains mostly populated by small-audience amateur radio shows, but traditional media companies ranging from VH1 to NPR to CBS have added podcasting content to their media output over the past year.Part of the reason that the podcasting has yet to go mainstream is due to the still small number of MP3 players in the market--with some reports estimating that 11 percent of Americans own such devices. Also, awareness among the general population of just exactly what a podcast is is relatively low--though its much larger amongst young adults and early adopters, says eMarketer. It's those audiences that have made podcasting attractive to several big name advertisers, despite its small usage numbers. Already, auto brands like Volvo, Toyota and Honda are sponsoring podcasts, and the report predicts that since "podcasting is positioned to deliver highly specialized content to niche groups," that all sorts of advertisers are ...
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Here's an extract from an excerpt of the book Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution by Justin Kirby and Paul Marsden (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005):"In the US, NOP (now GfK) research shows that 92% of Americans cite word of mouth as their preferred source of product information. Advertising company Euro RSCG has found that when it comes to generating excitement about products, word of mouth is 10 times more effective than TV or print advertising.8 Why should this be? Why should word of mouth connections become even more important in influencing buying behavior in an age when media formats and channels are proliferating? The answer has five facets: New personal communications technologies and digital media such as blogs, instant messaging, mobile telephones, email, online review sites, and personal Web sites are increasing the speed, reach, and utility of word of mouth. Digital media's capabilities in turbo-charging the viral spread of information means ...
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The Blank Noise Project has called for a Blog-a-thon :"To recognize Women's Day, and as part of an effort to build a core constituency that is aware of the Blank Noise Project, we're organizing a blogathon for Tuesday, the 7th of March. Blank Noise is asking other bloggers to post about their experiences of sexual harassment - as a victim, perpetrator or bystander - at work, at home or in the public sphere. Or deal with the subject anyway you like. On International Women's Day, which is March 8th, it would be exciting to see the theme of harassment become audible on the Indian and diasporic blogosphere."I remember many instances, as a teenager, way back in the 80's being 'harrassed' on the street and in public buses. At the time, I didn't know quite what to do about it ... it was almost embarrassing to mention it to friends or family, it seemed like such a personal 'attack', and in my growing awareness of my body at that age, it wasn't something I could share easily. Neither was it ...
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Gaurav writes to me ... "We are organizing the first ever BarCamp in Delhi in early March. It is an effort in energizing the more or less dormant startup scene in Delhi..."Sign up at the wiki here and Gaurav has a great explanation on what BarCamp is here.I think it's a good concept ... open learning and sharing. The theme for BarCampDelhi is "Next Generation Internet: Web 2.0, mobile computing, and other cool stuff". Nice nice nice ... I hope to pick up some geekspeak :). There's a really good chance I will be in Delhi then - so am signing up. If I can't physically be there, will read the blogs, and hope Gaurav is planning an IRC channel for the event. barcampdelhi
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I'm watching this space .. it's not live yet, but seems to have potential. "An internet blogging network that lets users create content and express opinion on well-known brands and products, is being supported by Honda (UK). The 2TalkAbout site will provide a trusted community-based environment for users with similar interests and tastes to share unbiased information. Honda is the first major brand to commit to the project. Visitors to 2TalkAbout can publish their views, respond to what other people are saying on the community and gain unbiased opinion and information about particular products and services. The Honda-sponsored site (www.2TalkAbout.com/honda) is aimed at anyone with an interest in Honda cars - particularly the new Civic. Although the content will be completely independent from Honda, engineers will regularly log-on to contribute and respond to feedback, providing users with direct access to the brand." [More here.]I've been talking to some clients about building ...
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One more way mobile social technology is being used to make a difference. BBC News has a report on how folks in distant villages with electricity for two hours a day, in Peru, are being reached through podcasts - a new pilot project is using podcasting to get important agricultural information to farmers.Some excerpts from the article : "The farmers do not yet have the means to listen on portable MP3 players. But UK charity Practical Action has married old and new technology to podcast twice-monthly updates to eight information centres in the Cajamarca region. Expansion hopes : These telecentres, many of which are run on solar power, automatically download the programmes onto CDs to rebroadcast them on local radio stations. The charity has found it effective to distribute audio material to local people, who prefer listening in their own dialect to being sent the written word.""We are also hoping that the database of podcasts on the internet will be used not just by Peruvian farmers ...
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They seem more like stereotypes than prejudices to me .... but according to Google, people in the world are known for. "This map of the world, charted by stereotypes was generated by Google searches and reflects the impressions of search results. The aggregator of this information is Google Blogscoped"[link for map via Napsterization]
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Since today seems to be my day of linking, I thought I'd also shoot out this list of things that have caught my interest recently ... many are from bloggers I read regularly - Nancy for instance is a huge repository of resources. I've bookmarked many of them with Furl too. Life_of_the_place.pdf - Technology & Community Life 2.0: Be grease, not glue. Video & Photoblog on Families affected by HIV in India The Power of Technology and SMS in Indian Temples Navigating the "Seven C's" Everyday Contexts of Camera Phone Use: Technosocial Ethnographic Frameworks (pdf) Conversation as a form of social inquiry - emerging out of Goethe Kaplan.pdf (application/pdf Object) The Individual is the new group From Push to Pull Some of these links are sooooo Web 2.0 ... yeah I know, I know many feel its just a buzzword or marketing hype. But I'm really ok with the term, it's easy on the tongue, it is more of an attitude than a technology, a renaissance. And, it is easier to explain 'social software' ...
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I finally got around to doing some housekeeping on my blog. Have edited the categories and links - am hoping they will render alright. The nice thing is each of them acts as a separate blog - so readers can subscribe separately to specific categories that interest you! Here they are - links and RSS feeds : Weblog Home : (all categories) subscribeBlogs & Blogging : subscribe Indian Culture : subscribe Bridging The Divide - Rural India : subscribe Business Opportunities : subscribe Pop!Tech 2005 : subscribe Creativity : subscribe Ethnography : subscribe Qualitative Research Perspectives : subscribe Social Tools in Disasters : subscribe Internet & Computing : subscribe Knowledge Management : subscribe Voice of the World : subscribe Random Views : subscribe Skype & VOIP : subscribe Social Tools and Social Media : subscribe Telephony : subscribe Usability & Design : subscribe Youth Rap & Insights : subscribe
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Two examples of blogs attempting to build community in India in completely new areas : ING Vysya is using a blog portal to provide services and encourage dialogues with persons interested in information and advice on Insurance. They explain why a blog in their context : Start your query session: You have already completed the first two steps and are now authorised to start posing questions to or leaving messages for your preferred advisor, via a special tool. You will see a response to your question or comment from your advisor, within a short while. This form of communication,called blogging, is private and only accessible by you or your advisoron our site. You have to be registered on the site, to make use of this service and start your own Private Blog with your selected advisor. Qt. What does blogging mean?Ans. Blogging is a new and unique way of communicating. It involves posting of messages by one person to another by way of sending messages to a special message box called ...
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In continuation to our efforts around the disasters, the WorldWideHelp group has set up a Remembrance Week. Here's how you can participate : Remembrance Week - 26th December, 2005 - 1st January, 2006 Last year, on the 26th December, an earthquake, and then a tsunami, killed,wounded, or impoverished hundreds of thousands of people in South Asia.During the course of the year, other disasters took their toll too. Most devastating of them: Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the South-Eastcoast of the USA; and another enormous earthquake near Pakistan's border with India. These disasters took their immediate toll, and, each time, the world tried to help. But as calamity piled upon calamity, there has been a certain amount of fatigue. Perhaps people's stock of goodwill has run low. Perhaps seeing too much suffering hardens us. But, the fact is, the suffering from those disasters has not ceased. Parts of South Asia have still not recovered from December 26th, 2004. In the USA, normalcy hasn't ...
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Follow-up from the summit : Full audio of the Global Voices 2005 Summit is now posted in podcast form. A brainstorms wiki page has been set up to further conversations and ideas for projects. Some interesting projects are taking shape there around Podcasts, Outreach and training, Translations, and moreI added a page in there called Virtual Bank for World Events, Issues, Disasters. As I was reflecting on how Global Voices can get more involved in activities that affect the world - my point of reference for this is the disaster blogging that occured - I felt that it would be just so wonderful to be able to tap into our network here, as and when required. For instance, when we set up the Tsunami Blog in December 2004 - communication and getting real voices and first-hand experiences was one of the biggest challenges - but GV was so young then, and I wish we could have worked with GV contributors in all the affected areas. So my request is - those who would like to be a part of a ...
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Ethan is asking questions about what it would mean for GV to get much more multi-lingual and how do we get there? What are the big ideas for GV going on? Some ideas : Pat Hall from Blogamundo starts off by saying distances stop becoming an issue in this online world, but language remains one. You keep hitting language barriers. One model is for translation facilities for certain posts in language. The other case is for a model that brings voices in different languages per se into the GV conversation - eg a Chinese GV or a Spanish GV. How can GV enable posts to be translated from Spanish to Chinese? Machine translations will not work says Pat Hall. Farid Pouya tells us about an idea he had - bloglogue. Blogs + Dialogue. He proposes that we could select subjects and invite people to debate them - bloggers and non-bloggers too. Can we therefore create a reservoir of information around a wide range of topics and issues. Creative Commons as issuing 'remix' licenses (am not sure if i got ...
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Tools to continue our conversation globally : GV05 Brainstorm Wiki IRC Channel globalvoices
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I think I did a stupid thing today. My curiousity got the better of me and I finally got Plaxo. And then, my mailbox got completely flooded with updates from Plaxo. And I got many messages from trusted friends telling me why they didn't use it : not wanting their personal details out there on the web Plaxo will autoemail all contacts of mine as it is sending plaxo ads under my name every quarter, under the ruse of updating contact info just don't trust them, they have access to all our contacts is this for real, is this 'phishing' they are *EVIL* Now I don't have any personal experiences for any of these - but I do trust my friends and blog buddies who, in my interest, wrote back to me. So am uninstalling it, deleting my account and am sorry to have bothered any of my readers with having to update your info on my behalf. On the other hand, Stowe Boyd wrote a piece way back in 2003 on Plaxo called Content Unmanagement. And he doesn't seem to feel it is spamming. I also discovered ...
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Grass roots campaigning as Elective Sociality (or Maffesoli meets social software): Lessons from the BBC iCan project - Stokes Jones, Lodestar Am excited to be listening to this paper ... Lee Bryant had spoken of how he used social tagging for the BBC at Reboot7. . Pre-history of the project : - record low turnout in 2001 British elections - quantitative research showed - apathy among voters widespread The original brief : develop a unique interactive community in which people can make a difference in civic life. To participate in democracy. Focus : Biased towards the local, and biased towards action. Why research : belief that the site's success would depend on how well it met campaigner's needs. Research focus : defining iCan's space - grassroots campaigners. Methodology : indepth incontext interviews and capaign office tours, gathering oral histories of specific campaigns, etc Deliverables : results expressed processes, priorities and needs of campaigners. The Questions for ...
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All my notes from Pop!Tech 2005 are on this page. I will share reflections on my take-out from this conference later.
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Saw this via ArZan's blog : "A very well written article By Darryl D'Monte in IndiaTogether, about the role of bloggers in today's world. There is an extensive conversation with Dina Mehta, one of the powerhouses of Indian blogging. The whole IIPM saga is mentioned. Are bloggers parked? Are bloggers just like journalists? The jury is still debating, but clearly bloggers are filling some voids in mainstream journalism, and connecting to net-savvy citizens in an exciting fashion. Blogs are not about to destroy conventional media, but they are making an impact, notes Darryl D'Monte. Continue reading at IndiaTogether. Transmogrified has a good commentary on the article; and so does our own Curios Gawker" I met Darryl at a recent workshop on effective writing on the web, organized by The New Media initiative of the Comet Media Foundation, where I did a presentation called 'Web 2.0 - How the Internet is getting more Social'. I have to figure out a way to upload this presentation to this ...
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This is what we are seeing demo'd live.Flock's a new browser .. makes bookmarking and tagging simple, has an RSS aggregator view, has a one-click blogging tool which feels so similar to being able to blog directly from my Radio News Aggregator, and from where you can blog pictures directly from a Flickr toolbar for example. Sounds neat - currently I use different tools for all these things ... would be nice to have a one-stop space !
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Peter send this out - this follows the IIPM vs bloggers issue. The "Right to Blog for Awareness" petition is up. Please go read, and if you agree, sign at http://www.petitiononline.com/blogbang/petition.html There's a lot at stake here, especially for bloggers in India.Is an interesting juxtaposition having just listened to Rebecca talk about Chinese censorship at Pop!Tech.
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There have been lots of interesting developments around the recent activities around the most recent earthquake in Pakistan and India. I haven't been able to blog much around them, but here's a little communications system set up by the members of the TsunamiHelp, KatrinaHelp and AsiaquakeHelp team : "An SMS reporter blog has been set up - mail sms2blog@gmail.com or send an SMS [to a Pakistan cellphone number, Imran Hashmi] at +923008568418 and he will forward it to the blog. Your reports will not appear on the blog instantly, because of a blogger glitch, but the blog admins will take turns republishing the blog as often as possible. Your post should appear on the site within an hour, on the average. The SMS Quake blog is dedicated to first person reports from the affected area, and is open to anyone. Repeat: Anyone. You don't have to be a member of the blog." This should be automated - its something we're working on. More documentation at the wiki. We couldn't use Skype this time ...
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Testing ... i think my blog is back :).
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My experiences with the Virtual Call Centre we have set up and the thought of a Virtual Phone Bank, makes me wonder whether it is worth considering combining the concept of an automated version of this little grassroots call centre with the PeopleFinder Project. The PeopleFinder project is a centralized repository, where you can search the data from dozens of sites, databases and forums that have been established to help survivors of Hurricane Katrina find their loved ones, and to allow people to report missing people. Benefits? It would take it to quite another level - from search to dialogue to action even. From an online service to one that could be accessed by millions more, without internet connections. In this way, during disaster situations, it would also be possible to reach out to regions that are poorly connected to the internet. [picture credit here] Add to that a functionality that Evelyn Rodriguez [link via Nancy] talked about in her post from a few days ago. Skype to ...
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For those who are interested in the Internet's responses to disasters, here's something you may wish to attend, hosted by Jerry Michalski and Pip Coburn. Incidently they've both been to Bombay - I spent some nice moments with Pip at Juhu beach - he insisted on walking barefoot, and with Jerry by the sea front and then peeking into his 'brain' ! Internet Reponses to DisastersYi-Tan Weekly Tech Call #50Monday, September 12, 2005From the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center through the Asian tsunami and the recent hurricane disaster in New Orleans, Internet communities have evolved increasingly sophisticated and useful response mechanisms. Blogs, wikis, photo-sharing sites and other services have been put to use to improve rescue efforts,help collect relief funds, find missing persons and structure recovery efforts. Because these responses harness the newest features of the Net around focused, important activities, they are a good barometer of what works on the Net ...
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Here's the html to apply the button to your page - [thanks Joho the Blog]
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(We are receiving KatrinaHelp callsThis is the button for people needing help to call in to the KatrinaHelp.info team. Please spread the word and install the button on your blogs and sites, so ...)
We are receiving KatrinaHelp callsThis is the button for people needing help to call in to the KatrinaHelp.info team. Please spread the word and install the button on your blogs and sites, so people needing help can call in. We have volunteers and associates from shelters, ER and other Emergency services on the ground with resources to help. More details on how to use the helplines are here. You can use our SkypeIn account too - the number is +15042081564 - with your request for help, and offers to help. (Please ensure you add the +1 to the number, even if you are in the USA. This is because the number is routed via Skype). If the line is busy, you will be forwarded to voicemail, please leave your name and contact details clearly and we will get back to you.
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