- Following the collapse of the political process in Kenya, bloggers White African and Kenyan Pundit – both of whom are worth reading, by the way – have developed a Google Maps mash-up which deals with electoral violence in the country. Called Ushaidi (‘witness’ in Swahili, I think?), it enables people to report events either online or via SMS. It’s not the first time something like this has been tried, but this an interesting organic attempt to pin down exactly what’s happening in the country. As anybody working in human rights knows, gathering this sort of information is extremely difficult – particularly later on when it might be needed. More explanation from White African in this blog post, coverage at Global Voices (with an interesting article on cyber activism in Africa) and the BBC.
- There’s been a fair amount of discussion about how the media and responders can work more effectively together in the last couple of years, and of course a whole heap of blogs and similar about how the new technology is going to change the face of disaster response, etc, etc. So far, not much has happened, but TVE Asia and the UNDP Regional Centre in Bangkok have just published a free resource called Communicating Disasters. It’s an interesting but disjointed read – I’m not exactly sure who it’s targeted at, to be honest…
- There was a brief flurry of blogging around Nathan Eagle’s article, The Mobile Web is NOT helping the Developing World – and what we can do about it, mainly because it burst the bubble of optimism around bringing the internet to the poorest through the Miracle of Mobile Telephony (TM). Of course, Nathan’s position is not that it isn’t possible, just that we’re not doing it right at the moment. Personally, I’m still waiting for some hard evidence that these efforts benefit the poor rather than the relatively well-off – but that might just be splitting hairs.
- Witness have launched The Hub, their online platform for human rights-related videos and media, after a long incubation period. Cutting through the bumf, it’s intended to connect individuals and organizations who are working on human rights around the world. It’s an interesting lunge at building global connectivity in a sector (human rights) that is notoriously factional, and the focus on media is potentially powerful – particularly new media forms, such as mobile phone content, which are incredibly powerful tools for mobilizing support. You can register at http://hub.witness.org/login.