Google Web History is a service that stores your Google searches and the results you clicked on. This can be helpful if you can’t find a site anymore which you found useful earlier. What Google Web History is not supposed to do is to continue to log searches from a computer that you haven’t been using in months! Spying with Google Web History Here is what happened: About six weeks ago I logged into Web History when I noticed some strange entries.[...]
Archive for November, 2009
Yesterday, around 3,000 people demonstrated against a WTO in Geneva. While coming back from the super market I saw a really bizarre scene in the middle of the riot police and dissipating clouds of tear gas: I was walking through my neighbourhood Paquis, a part of town where the streets are lined with middle-aged prostitutes and drug dealers. At a street corner there was a big gaggle of riot police who had set up an improvised command post the and were processing[...]
I know many NGOs who produce feature-length advocacy films to state their case against e.g. climate change, human trafficking, dragnet-fishing etc. And I am certain that many of them could be greatly enhanced by an approach like “Us Now”.
I like well made advocacy videos – and the one that British Red Cross released today definitely falls into this category. It features Konnie Huq, a well know and very sexy tv-presenter (well known in the UK). The question is: “Would you still want to kiss her, if she was HIV positive?” The reason this video was made is a survey that British Red Cross commissioned of 16-25-year-olds in the UK. The result: Even though 85 per cent know you cannot[...]
Just before I left for my mini break to Prague last week (great city!) I saw “Us Now“, a one hour feature about how collaborative tools can help us make better decisions. The film is public domain and if you want, you can watch the complete documentary below. You can also buy it on DVD, watch it on YouTube or download it as a torrent! In fact, the film project’s website is almost as interesting as the film itself, which[...]
Given how obsessed everyone was with how social media helped elect Barack Obama, I’m surprised that I haven’t read more reviews of this book: “Yes We Did – An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand” by Rahaf Harfoush, which gives an excellent overview over how the Obama campaign used social media to mobilize people to donate time and money. Harfoush (@rahafharfoush) was a volunteer with Obama’s new media team. She describes the different tools that the campaign used[...]
One of my projects over the last few months was to write and get approval for social media staff guidelines for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). I’m sharing them because I hope that they will be useful to other organizations who are working on similar documents.
One of the most persistent and hardest to dispel myths in social media is that of the “quick win”. Since Facebook, Twitter etc. are easy to use from a technical point of view and since there are always stories of people getting an insane amount of attention through these channels, many people assume that there is no work involved. Scott Stratten has recently posted an excellent, short video (1:52 min) explaining why you can’t expect to open a social media account[...]
