e-Democracy guru Steven Clift passed along a very helpful set of recommendations for non-profits on how to respond to online criticm, written by Jayne Cravens at Coyote Communications. In a nutshell, what she says is, respond respectfully and promptly to online criticism. I couldn’t agree more. Giving someone with a complaint more than a fortnight…
Category: Information Society
Food Force: you played it, now blog it
The World Food Programme has really capitalized on its first video game Food Force by creating versions of the game in several languages, most recently Polish, and now launching a blog featuring one of the in-game characters “Joe”. The blog looks like it is going to be a curious mixture of real world examinations of…
Posters in Second Life on organizing effective multi-verse events
As I have blogged about previously, I have started a wiki page on the Second Life Education wiki on the subject of “Best Practices for RL/SL Events” . More ideas have been trickling in, and I’ve been making the page a bit easier to read. Now SL resident Milosun Czervik (that’s him besides me in…
Scam Spam from the “National Conference Against Racism Discrimination and Safety”
Oh fun, got a scam email today from the "National Conference Against Racism Discrimination and Safety." First off, how can you be against safety? LOL. It’s got the typical weirdness: bad English, a phone number that doesn’t correspond to the address, and an offer too-good-to-be-true-because-it-isn’t. In this case, an all-expense-paid trip to Dubai. The only…
“An Inconvenient Truth”: the most important slide show you will see all year
Cindy and I saw “An Inconvenient Truth” last night. As someone who should be fairly well informed on these issues, with frequent contact with environmental activists and experts, I was surprised and appalled by the urgency of the ecological crisis facing our planet. It is indeed terribly “inconvenient” to face the reality that within our…
Negroponte’s $130 laptop versus Intel’s $400 laptop
According to ZDNET, John Negroponte announced a couple of days ago that the first iteration of the “$100 laptop” from the One Laptop Per Child initiative will be closer to $130 to $140 dollars. Even at $130, this computer still comes in at a pricepoint that governments like China, Brazil and South Africa could consider…
Defending human dignity with a cell phone
I was honored to be invited to a one day strategic discussion today on a new human rights video hub being created by the non-profit WITNESS. Started at the initiative of Peter Gabriel, in 1992, WITNESS uses the power of video to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. Traditionally their work…
Down with reactionary bloggers!
For the 40th anniversary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution Ah Q Weekly’s chinese blog re-designed an old poster from the Cultural Revolution to comment on Chinese government censorship of the internet, and bloggers in particular. According to Oi wan Lam of Global Voices, "The original poster depicts a worker using Mao’s tiny red book to…
Convenient simulation of an Inconvenient Truth?
Just checked out the Second Life island of Svarga, lovingly designed by Laukosargas Svarog with its own virtual ecosystem. Laukosargas not only created virtual flowers and trees that grow, she also populated the island with bees that pollinate the flowers, clouds that bring rain, and sun-lit and shady areas with different growth patterns. It’s the…
Fight for irrepressible voices worldwide
Amnesty International launched today a new campaign called www.irrepressible.info to call public attention and pressure on governments that censor their citizens online and the companies that develop the surveillance software. To support the campaign, you can add censored content to your website or blog and sign their petition. Already 7,000 + people have done just…