Dear oh dear. Here’s a lesson in how not to get people involved in taking action on climate change. The embedded video, which is no doubt supposed to be hilarious, depicts some sceptical people including school children being blown up for not wanting to participate.
I’m not sure how or why the makers thought this might help to convince sceptical people to participate. Apart from being in really poor taste, this kind of thing only gives ammunition to those who are vocal in their opposition to action.
The video was written for the 10:10 campaign by Richard Curtis of Love Actually, Blackadder, Four Weddings, Bridget Jones’ Diary and Notting Hill fame. Epic communication fail this time, Richard.
Needless to say, the organisation involved has removed the video from their website and replaced it with an apology. But hey, this is the internet, so it can still be found pretty easily.
Here’s an interesting TED Talk from 2009 by Nicholas Christakis. It’s about how social networks of many kinds, not just online social networks, can be used to detect epidemics a lot earlier than previously.
We’re not just talking flu epidemics here, although he does discuss a study of the H1N1 virus they conducted within the student population at Harvard. We’re also talking about the spread of ideas and behaviours within networks.
While watching the video, I couldn’t help but think about the book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Amazon Assoc. link) by Malcolm Gladwell, which addresses similar ideas about the spread of ideas and viruses. If you’re interested in human social networks in general, it’s well worth a read too, if you haven’t already.
Needless to say, I find this stuff pretty interesting. Do check out this (20 min) TED Talk if you do too.
I think this TED Talkby Iqbal Quadiris a poignant and powerful reminder that connectivity equals productivity. For those of us who use the web and smart mobile devices daily, it’s easy to forget just how much these enable greater productivity, even if some of our time is spent on more trivial or entertaining activities.
In this inspiring, embedded video, social entrepreneur Iqbal Quadir tells how his experiences as a kid in Bangladesh, and later as an investment banker in New York, led him to start a mobile phone operator connecting 80 million rural Bangladeshi.
In the process, he became a champion of bottom-up development, rather than giving increasing amounts of aid money to top down development, which seems not to be working very well, if at all. In fact, he maintains that it only empowers authorities to maginalise citizens. Even in countries that have grown rich from oil reserves, autocratic regimes have grown hugely wealthy, while poverty among citizens remains entrenched.
Enter Iqbal Quadir. Not long ago in Bangladesh, only one in 500 people had access to a telephone. Quadir points out that “Vasts amounts of wasted time results. The only way people can depend on each other is to connect to each other, which leads to productivity.”
Watch the video to find out how he overcame the significant hurdles involved in what turned out to be a massive connectivity project and business. How could poor people afford to use mobile phones? Who would invest in such a project in such a poor country? This video is a must see.
To recap, as they say in the embedded “How to” video, Google Realtime allows you to search real-time content from across the web. Sources include news stories, blog posts and social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz and Friendfeed. The real-time stream constantly and automatically refreshes, feeding in live content as it’s posted to the web.
The ability to look back in time to view updates from the past.
The ability to refine your search by location – by town, state or country.
The ability to browse a conversation (on Twitter for instance), to see how it developed over time.
The ability to set up Google Alerts for real-time updates.
Personally, I really like the addition of being able to refine search by location. As in my previous real-time search engine comparison post, I searched under a favourite topic of mine, cleantech, and then refined the search just to Australia. It came up with some interesting and useful results for me. I’ve previously said, as it’s not a new feature, that I also like the ability to be able to search historically. This remains true.
What are your thoughts on Google Realtime Search? Have you found yourself using it yet? Is it useful enough for you, or do you use another real-time search engine? Do you use real-time search at all?
Check the embedded video for the full set of new features in more detail and how to use them.
Well by now you’ve probably seen the trailer for the much anticipated, and apparently quite dark, movie about the founding of Facebook, The Social Network. Now comes a new spoof (there are others) of The Social Network trailer, complete with an excellent parody soundtrack.
The Twit Network trailer relentlessly lampoons Twitter’s flood of minutiae from people’s everyday lives. It begins with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey having a conversation with a friend which goes “I need to create a way to blog that is as random and incoherent as writing on a bathroom wall”. “Why”. “Because normal blogging is tedious and dumb and leads to fully formed ideas”. I’m sure you get the picture. It’s funny :)
The parody trailer also begs the question, if The Social Network turns out to be a box office success, will we one day see a feature film about Twitter too?
On a side note, as you can see from the tweet below, which is a quote from the video trailer, Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone seems to think it’s funny too.
