Posts Tagged ‘the-300-some’
Social Commentary Or Extremely Poor Taste?
A lot of people know that hunger is a major problem in Africa, but few people ever think about it, let alone do anything about it. One Twitter account claims to be trying to spread the message with the use of very straight-forward tweets pretending to be from a starving African.
The tweets range from “hungry,” to “really, really hungry,” to “belly. distending,” and variations on those. Whoever is in charge the the account writes in its bio, “Social commentary illuminating the startling gap between the haves and the have nots.” But is this just poor taste? Apparently the 300-some people that follow the account don’t think so.
[thanks Eric]
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YouTube Launches Reporters’ Center, Wants To School Citizen Journalists In Better News Reporting
Over the weekend, YouTube launched a new channel dubbed Reporters’ Center, which it hopes will prove to be a good way to educate existing and aspiring citizen journalists on how to report news in ‘the digital age’. The new resource will feature a host of top journalists and media experts sharing instructional videos with tips and advice for better reporting.
So far, there are 34 videos uploaded to the channel, featuring people like Facebook Marketing Director Randi Zuckerberg providing 8 tips on how to maximize distribution of your YouTube video on the social network her brother famously co-created, and folks like CBS News’ Katie Couric and legendary Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward explaining how to conduct a good interview and how to be an investigative reporter, respectively.
The idea is sound and some of the content is rather good, and I’m sure it will provide a helpful resource for citizen reporters across the globe. Of course, it serves YouTube’s interests as well when more and more people take up the habit of filming whatever happens in their neighborhood and upload the videos to the wildly popular sharing site afterwards.
If you have any tips to share, you can also upload your own videos to the channel.
(Hat tip to NewTeeVee)
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Google’s Africa Strategy: Search And Trade Via SMS
Not only does Google want to organize all the world’s information, it also wants to make all that information available to everyone in the world. For the majority of the world’s population, that means making it available on a cell phone, and not a fancy iPhone or Android with a Web browser either. I’m talking about $10 cell phones with not much more than voice and SMS capabilities. If Google can reach people, especially in developing nations, with SMS, it can reach everyone with a cell phone.
In Africa, it is launching a suite of SMS services today, including SMS search, Q&A-style tips, and an SMS-based marketplace. The first country to get these services is Uganda.
The search service works like Google SMS in North America. You text a search term, and it responds via SMS with the result. Searches can be narrowed by using specific keywords such as “local time,” “weather,” “news,” “maps,” “translation,” or “currency conversion.” For more complicated searches, the related SMS tips service offers answers in an automated Q&A format.
But the most interesting application is Google Trader, which allows people to post items for sale and jobs via SMS. Other people can search for them by texting the service with the word “BUY” preceding the search term. Google Trader connects the buyer and seller together (each listing contains the seller’s cell phone number).
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