Nokia Siemens in Iran: Shame or all’s fair game for telcos? was my exactly one year ago on the sale of equipment to Iran by Nokia that enables the clampdown on, inter alia, the freedom of expression. At the time, Ben Roome, a spokesperson for Nokia Siemens who also commented on my blog, was on [...]
Archive | June, 2010
Commemorating only what is convenient: War victories that forget those killed?
18th June was declared a public holiday in Sri Lanka to celebrate the victory over the LTTE a little over a year ago. Plans to hold the celebrations in Colombo in May were thwarted by torrential rain. Many no doubt will partake in and witness the parade of triumphalism on Galle Face green, mirrored at [...]
Time magazine on the iPad: A glimpse of the future
Just before my lecture at the Sri Lanka College of Journalism (SLCJ) for newsroom managers, I came across this video on Time magazine’s app for the Apple iPad. I’ve not yet taken a look at the issue highlighted in the video below, but reading two other issues downloaded to the iPad suggest that along with [...]
Newsroom management and new media
This lecture to mid-career journalists at the Sri Lanka College of Journalism (SLCJ) looks at how new media can help strengthen newsroom management – by improving and streamlining workflows, providing new avenues of news generation and dissemination and strengthening investigative journalism, even under repressive, censorious regimes. Importantly, the technologies and platforms I cover can be [...]
Oil slick reporting through mobiles
The potential of Oil Reporter, a new mobile application from Crisis Commons, goes far beyond its intended application to monitor the fallout of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on the Gulf Coast. In a blog post written four years ago (Content without wires), I hinted at the potential for meaningful peacebuilding through similar applications, running on smartphones [...]
Open data initiative of the World Bank: Lessons for Lanka?
The Open Data Initiative of the World Bank, that I came across yesterday, is in design and content at the cutting edge of how vital statistics can be accessed by civil society and media to feed into and inform public debates and policies. In addition to the web based interface, there’s also an iPhone / [...]
ICTs for Risk and Crisis Management
Presentation delivered, in my capacity as Special Advisor to the ICT4Peace Foundation, at 3rd International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC Davos 2010, 30 May – 3 June 2010, Davos, Switzerland.
