October 2008 Archives

What do the United Arab Emirates, FriendFeed and EveryZing have in common? All three are current examples of the explosion of new media technology and applications that we need to be aware of.

Here is an interesting breakthrough in the use of new media applications.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Dubai Naturalization and Residency Department (DNRD) has launched new mobile M-Visa facilities to offer its customers instant notifications via email and text messages upon issuance of their entry visa permits. This service is available at www.ednrd.ae.

When a visa is issued, customers will be notified through an email and SMS message. The email includes an original visa document (PDF format) bearing DNRD logo and the signature of the Director. The PDF will be secure to avoid any tampering with the details of the visitor.

The SMS notification encloses the same bar code printed on the original visa document in a 2D format, as well as key indicators about the visitor and the designated sponsor. The SMS can be sent to any destination around the world and the UAE-based sponsor will also receive the same notifications.

Upon arrival at to any of UAE entry points, the bar code scanner set up at the DNRD check points will read the details of the entry permit directly off the mobile devices of the visitors to make their entry into the country easy and quick. This innovative service starting January 2009 at Dubai entry points.

On a different point, EveryZing, a media indexing company, is launching its own media player that will let people search for spoken words within videos. The player's secret power is that it also indexes YouTube videos, giving a publisher who embeds YouTube content more functionality than YouTube itself provides.

The new video player, called MetaPlayer, uses technology the company already has in the market in its ezSearch and ezSEO products.

MetaPlayer is provided to its customers alongside other back-end tools. On sites that support it people will be able to type in a query in the video player and see where on that video (and other videos on the site), the term entered comes up; they can then jump to that spot.

A new kid on the block is to be found at www.newmediabytes.com FriendFeed is a social aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites such as blog entries, social book-marking websites, and micro-blogging updates. Users can then use this consolidated stream of information to create customized feeds to share with friends.

FriendFeed recently released the Real-Time Updates feature that allows you to watch live updating aggregation streams on the site. You can also take these streams and embed then on your own blog if you like.

This feature opens the door to many possibilities for live streaming conversations about a particular topic, among a specific group of people and around certain events.

FriendFeed provides the facility to track these activities (such as posting on blogs, Twitter and Flickr across a broad range of different social networks. FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, California.

Photo by Christian Horcel. Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0 Generic

The three recent Saturday Night Live (SNL) send-up parodies of Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin by Tina Fey demonstrate a significant Web turning point.

The audiences watching the show as it was broadcast were significant. However, those viewing on-line or through digital video recorders were twice as large according to numbers released by Integrated Media Measurement Inc (IMMI).

According to IMMI, this is one of the first times "delayed viewing numbers topped the original viewing audience" by such a wide margin.

SNL skits are also enjoying strong ratings on NBC's www.hulu.com site.

These so-called secondary audiences are important for mainstream media as a source of new revenue.

SNL is aware that many of its prime target audiences are not sitting at home watching the tube. On Saturday night they are hitting the night spots at theatres, clubs and bars. So these short SNL skits make for great viewing the next day for web savvy younger audiences.

Saturday Night Live has plans in the works to launch a dedicated Website with short skits to create a revenue source for the parent network through the sale of advertisements, subscriptions or paid downloads.

Another example of the web unleashed is the emergence of specialized professional websites such as www.law.com where viewers can find a wide range of blogs on topics such as law, lobbying, politics, crime, courts, business and culture in the nation's capital and beyond.

Similar specialized sites exist for every profession from health to finance to emergency planning.

With the tough economic times we are now facing, smart organizations need to recognize this potential revenue stream so they can unleash the power of the Web to their advantage.

And for governments, this is just one more indicator that Web 2.0 is changing how segments of the population access information.


Photo: Thomas Roache - Creative Commons License Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

In case you didn't notice it as a news item on the Digital Communities site, here's an announcement of a new resource for local governments exploring Web 2.0 technologies....

Many new web developments, now collectively referred to under the umbrella of Web 2.0, are receiving increased scrutiny in the government sector. Basic questions arise. Is Web 2.0 simply another hype storm created by technocrats and marketers in an attempt to generate new demand for products?  Or do these technologies offer a real answer to some of the traditional shortcomings of citizen government interaction?

A new white paper from the Digital Communities' CIO Task Force explores these and other questions as part of coming to terms with what these CIOs are now calling Government 2.0 - the efforts undertaken by communities, states and the federal government to implement the new tools and technologies that extend the utility of the Internet.

"Government 2.0: Building Communities with Web 2.0 and Social Networking is the first in a series of Digital Communities white papers that will be produced by our task forces,"  explained Todd Sander, deputy director of the Center for Digital Government and director of the Digital Communities program. "It provides a candid look into the thinking of CIO Task Force members as they struggle to balance the opportunity for broader community engagement with issues of security, infrastructure capacity and public perception."

Among those jurisdictions that have chosen to explore the possibilities, the consensus seems to be that Web 2.0 can help government enhance its existing relationship with citizens by creating new avenues of interaction. But based on research conducted by the Center for Digital Government, it is clear that for every community that has decided to explore the possibilities another has decided not to; at least not right now.

According to Sander, the reasons for this are varied. "Some cite excessive demand on limited infrastructure and bandwidth, others security concerns, and many the difficulty overcoming the perception that such sites demonstrate no recognizable or defensible legitimate business use and provide little more than the opportunity for public employees to waste time at work," he said.

Yet a number of jurisdictions who are exploring some of the potential of Web 2.0 technologies are gaining positive insights, some of which are detailed in the white paper.

Moreover, the vision of government is starting to shift. As the white paper notes, "Perhaps the greatest potential for Web 2.0 technology in local government is its ability to, as Washington, D.C., CIO Vivek Kundra said, 're-establish the public square' and create and connect communities of interest."

That notion alone makes this an intriguing white paper, well worth a read.

A full copy of the white paper can be downloaded free from the Digital Communities Resource Center.

The current election for Prime Minster in Canada serves up an excellent example of how using the new media can backfire if you don't think things through.

It is important to note that Canada has five political parties in the run for office. Four are national parties and one is Quebec-based. This makes the dynamics of politics more interesting than in many places where voters are limited to a choice of Party A or Party B!

With approximately 17 million Canadians having Facebook pages it seemed like a good idea to make use of the power of social networking to connect with the under-25 crowd.

This is the first time in Canadian election history that every party leader has a Facebook page. They use their page to post policy announcements, pictures of their families, their favourite movies and other personal information, all aimed at making them more appealing to young voters.

However, there are new rules for the new media.

Before the advent of Facebook, political parties carefully controlled the content and style of their ads, how they were placed in radio, TV and print lineups. They would conduct media monitoring and analysis to see how successful they were at achieving their political objectives.

This is not what happens with Facebook pages.

Citizens are posting unflattering comments on the leaders' sites and some are using Facebook to turn things around - to use Facebook to organize against the parties and their leaders.

For example, when the one party's leader opposed the addition of another leader in a nationally televised debate, he was slammed by people who said they had been his supporters, but could no longer support him or his party because of his "narrow-minded opposition."

Facebook pages give voters that instant opportunity to express their opposition and to open up discussion.

On Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Facebook page, one user managed to put a "Redneck" label on his photo. Not what you want to see on your page!

Another Facebook group has been formed calling themselves "Anti-Harper Vote Swapping Canada." They have set up a system to help users strategically prevent wins by Harper's Conservative party. It works by connecting users whose preferred candidate has little chance of winning with other members willing to vote for the party that has the best chance at stopping the local Conservative candidate.

Will, this work? It's hard to say, however,  predictions are that no one party will be able to break through with a clear majority, so these swing seats could be very critical.

Note to politicians: when you decide to use the new media you better be ready for creative counter-uses by the new media-savvy crowd.


Photo by Jacob Bøtter. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic