India has turned SMS crazy, according to Kamla Bhatt. Actually the dynamic she describes isn’t so different from what we have been experiencing in Scandinavia (where SMS was invented!). People text incessantly, anywhere, about anything. How about filing your tax return per SMS? No problem. Interesting similarities, given the huge differences between the societies… In another post, she discusses the topic of mobile vs PC web access in India, and mobile comes out on top. That was a recurring theme at the recent We Media conference as well, where participants from China, India and African countries all stressed the importance of the mobile phone for web access in their areas.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Texting the subcontinent
Thursday, May 18th, 2006Salam’s dark absurdities from Iraq
Thursday, May 11th, 2006Salam Pax is updating from Baghdad again, and has renamed his blog The Daily Absurdity Report. The word absurdity should here be read as an understatement.
Disruptive wave
Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006Strong statement from the BBC’s Mark Thompson: The second digital wave (Web 2.0?) will be more profound, disruptive and important than the first wave.
The BBC “Creative Future” strategy “attempts to wrestle with questions” about what the development will mean for the BBC. The last couple of years he has seen a shift inside the BBC from anxiety on top of list of reactions to a recognition that this unfolding world will give them a better chance to fulfill their goals than the old order. A lot of what the BBC should do will translate easily into this world.
Relevance, responsiveness, a broader debate as important for users as the values of accuracy, authority in journalism.
The second wave will be disruptive, “many parts of official media arent going to make it,” he said.
Thompson challenged old ideas about the digital divide. In Africa you can find people who have to walk miles for water, but they still have mobile phones.
Tag: wemedia
44 days
Wednesday, April 26th, 2006I’m proud to be one of so far 32 Norwegians in the world’s largest online stadium. The most patient crowd you’ll ever find (via Netzeitung).
Tuesday, April 11th, 2006
Friends tell me that Rojo runs circles around my dear Bloglines as feed reading tool. So checking the red one is on the to do-list.
A good investment
Monday, April 10th, 2006The “Leipzig Prize for the Freedom and Future of the Media” for 2006 has been jointly awarded to Moldavian journalist Alina Anghel, Italian journalist Fabrizio Gatti and the German journalist Dr. Volker Lilienthal. The prize is 30.000 euro and is awarded by the media foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig bank (via Netzeitung). An excellent investment by the bank in the health of democracy and an example to follow for other banks and corporations.
Wednesday, March 29th, 2006
Just to keep up with all the amazing new web services out there is hard enough. A couple of new discoveries: Customizable homepage Netvibes and web word processor ajaxWrite. Enjoy.
Wednesday, March 29th, 2006
The Reboot 8.0 conference in Copenhagen June 1-2 asks people to submit proposals for what they want to hear and talk about. Presented in wiki format. Very smart. I’ve added it to my European media conferences watchlist.
Friday, March 17th, 2006
Eliot Spitzer’s golden rule: “Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an e-mail.”
The last one not to follow Spitzer’s rule is a media professor with a night job as communications adviser. It’s always fun to read an e-mail which says “confidential”. The memo (pdf, in Norw.) itself contains a fair amount of good analysis. The outrageous part is of course that the researcher played neutral expert at the same time as advising one of the parties.
Tuesday, March 14th, 2006
The Belarus opposition group Zubr’s website was mentioned here, then the site disappeared over the weekend, and now it’s online again. Lots of new updates with photos of demonstrations and activists in action.
Norwegian press photos of the year
Friday, March 10th, 2006Oddleiv Apneseth won the award for best Norwegian press photo of 2005. All award winning photos and more on parade at Fotojournalisten.
Journalist hell, journalist paradise
Thursday, March 9th, 2006In hardly any other country can more exciting stories be found than in today’s Iraq, notes Susanne Fischer in Die Zeit: But nowhere is the attempt to find and tell those stories more dangerous. Since the invasion, 83 journalists have died in Iraq (Fischer wrote 82. The 83rd was Monsef Al-Khalidi of Baghdad TV, says Reporters without borders: “He was shot dead at the wheel of his car by gunmen yesterday on the road from Baghdad to the northern city of Mosul.”)
Fischer should know what she’s talking about. She’s working for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting’s Iraq project in northern Iraq. Her report has a cautious, but not defeatist tone: Journalism in Iraq is not only dangerous, it is also often dependent on and heavily influenced by political parties and religious organisations. The main challenge for Iraqi journalists is to earn the confidence of the people – to show that the media work in the interest of the public, not the powerful. The classic task.
Related: Salam Pax is posting, though infrequently. Worthwhile also his Newsvine tips.
Blogthings?
Wednesday, March 8th, 2006Suddenly Blogthings is the top site at Technorati top 100 – by many miles. It wasn’t among the top 10 a few weeks ago. Would be interesting to know how that happened!
How to define non-news
Friday, February 17th, 2006Media break?
Monday, January 23rd, 2006
Visiting Oslo? A skiing trip is nowadays strongly recommended… also for bloggers…
