After incorporating Twitter’s @Anywhere functionality to Groundviews, I was inspired create two lists of Twitter accounts I follow on a regular basis. The first was a list of the best Twitter accounts on Sri Lanka, currently featuring 14 feeds. The second was a list of the best Twitter accounts by Sri Lankan bloggers, currently featuring 15 [...]
Archive | April, 2010
South Asian Media Cultures: Audiences, Representations, Contexts
South Asian Media Cultures: Audiences, Representations, Contexts is finally out. Edited by Shakuntala Banaji, the book features a chapter written by me titled Expanding the Art of the Possible: Leveraging Citizen Journalism and User Generated Content (USG) for Peace in Sri Lanka. It is one of two essays in the tome dealing with media in [...]
Dopamine and humanitarian aid
Boomers had the zipless fuck. We have the clickless give. With a line like that, you know the article you’re reading is going to be irreverent, intelligent and incisive. How Twitter + Dopamine = Better Humans by Scott Brown on Wired is all three. It is also a cogent critique of the generation of humanitarian [...]
The mind-boggling growth of Twitter
I had just published Archiving every single tweet on Twitter: Two parallel initiatives when I came across this graphic visualising the growth and scale of Twitter. The original can be seen here. In Sri Lanka, I’ve pioneered the use of Twitter for new models of journalism. Through Groundviews, we have used it to cover, inter alia, [...]
Global risk analysis by World Economic Forum
I’m a great believer in the power of visualisations to help understand complex challenges. The World Economic Forum has recently launched a Risk Interconnection Map for 2010, covering the knock-on effects of key processes and issues in the domains of economics, geopolitics, environment, society, technology and society. This visualisation is a useful tool in the [...]
Archiving every single tweet on Twitter: Two parallel initiatives
Tweets provide vital snapshots into current events. Though I use Twitter extensively in my citizen journalism as well as private communications, the platform itself does not provide an easy way to search and index tens of thousands of updates. Historical events such as the immediate fall-out of the Presidential Election in Sri Lanka on 26th [...]
New media lecture at SLCJ
I delivered a two hour lecture in English and Sinhala on new media to journalism diploma students at the Sri Lankan College of Journalism. I always begin by noting that it is impossible to learn new media through a presentation, much as one cannot learn swimming or cycling by reading. Stressing that new media is [...]
Being nasty online
A blog post in the New York Times explores an issue I care about deeply – civility online. It notes, The other notion discussed in the review is Mr. Lanier’s belief that the “drive-by anonymity” allowed by the Web has led to a mean mob mentality — or as Mr. Tierney calls it, “vicious pack [...]
Locating dead people through photography
Now this is cutting-edge technology. Called hyperspectral imaging, Discovery News notes that, Using hyperspectral imaging, scientists from McGill University have found unmarked animal graves with special cameras that measure changes in the light coming from soil and plants. Hyperspectral imaging collects and processes light from across the electromagnetic spectrum, including visible light, as well as [...]
It’s ok for government to infiltrate online privacy of Sri Lankan citizens?
A wide-ranging interview published in the Daily Mirror with Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, also the brother of the President, addresses the issue of internet and web surveillance. The relevant excerpt follows: As an IT expert, do you think that it is ethical for a government to infiltrate into the online privacy of Sri [...]
