I’m evaluating several web conferencing packages for my organization. In my mind I imagine that there must be one that combines video conferencing, VOIP, traditional teleconferencing, app sharing and recording. And that doesn’t cost $10,000 a year to deploy. I’m quite fond of Elluminate, which is a web conferencing service that comes from the academic…
Category: Web/Tech
Signs that you are no longer cutting edge – SNL spoofs video podcasting
Saturday Night Lame, I mean, Live, did a skit spoofing video podcasting last night, hearkening back to the Dana Carvey and Mike Meyers parodies of cable access television programming. The main difference being that "Wayne’s World" was actually funny, while this barely passed as comedy. For those who didn’t suffer enough, you can view the…
Using the Net to share our mental maps
I was playing around with the cool website wayfarer.com and I created a map of swing dance venues in Manhattan. Wayfarer uses the Googlemaps system to allow anyone to create their own custom maps, and allow others to add and edit them at will. You simply name your map (“Haunted Places in Dartmour,” “Great Lakes…
Dr King on Technology and Social Change
This is what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had to say about technology and social change: The trouble isn’t so much that our scientific genius lies behind us, but that our moral genius lies behind us. The means by which we live outdistance the spiritual ends by which we live. Amen.
Windows on a Mac: Get Ready for More Switchers
I just finished watching the webcast of Steve Jobs at the Macworld expo in San Francisco, where he unveiled today the newest innovations coming out of Apple. I’m a huge Mac addict — I’m typing now on my third iBook. And Job’s announcement that the newest “Macbooks” and iMacs will come with Intel dual core…
Dear UN: Please get an RSS feed
The United Nations website is filled with a wealth of useful information and news about the world we live in, from on-the-ground updates on conflicts and security crises to statistical data on every country on the planet. And yet it tends to hoard that information to be mostly consumed by a small population of diplomats…
“Voices of the UN”: where UN bashers and whistleblowers meet
Someone has gone and stolen my idea. Some folks have created a website called “Voices of the UN” for workers at the United Nations to express themselves anonymously on how the organization is doing. While I am intrigued by the idea, I have to wonder if there are real dangers in creating a central repository…
Googling the UN Document Server
The United Nations has added another search function to their two existing “simple search” and “advanced search” functions already on their Official Document System, and you get one guess where they bought it. For those who haven’t been following the news, earlier this year the UN publicly released their online archive of documents — including…
Podcasting: ok, I get it
I have started downloading podcasts to my iPod mini to try out this new wave of broad-based internet radio. Getting stuck waiting for subway trains at 11pm at night, surfing through the podcasts on my iPod, I suddenly got the appeal of this weird technology. Before I thought, why is podcasting qualitatively different from existing…
The ODS and UN capacity
The ODS exemplifies how UN staff are often caught between idealistic expectations and meager resources. A couple of days ago I got a very informative and frank email from someone in the United Nations’ IT department regarding the UN’s Official Document System. On the practical front, he informed me that the IT staff had modified…