http://www.thisisafricaonline.com/Business/Baidu-targets-Africa-with-Orange-tie-up

http://www.thisisafricaonline.com/Business/Baidu-targets-Africa-with-Orange-tie-up

This is the first move of the Chinese content industry into Africa. I predicted it in my article on Chinese IT missions to Africa for This is Africa half a year ago.

African Digital Diaries is live

This was built for us in Bangladesh by the charming Mamunur Rashid - and is starting to do the business.

African mobile predictions

Rudy de Waele has collected five predictions from a wide range of African mobile entrepreneurs and visionaries. They consensually point to a very exciting african mobile future.

Mobile Trends 2020 Africa

View more presentations from Rudy De Waele

Facebook population psychology research tool

This community (or audience) profliing dataset from Cambridge University Psychometrics unit is in beta. http://likeaudience.com/ and I think it is quite interesting. It is the first research tool using facebook as its population sample which is produced with proper statistical methodology.

I see social media planning applications in benchmarking, indexing, community and prediction work: it mines a very large set of Facebook profiles to create a normative population conformed to a standard psychological classification procedure.

Audio Map immersive sound navigation

Nothing beats this for immersive navigation and information delivery on the web. A music map which allows you to see and hear as you explore modern composition. Click "Music Map"

Editing on YouTube

I thought I'd try out the YouTube free editor as I'm always saying that web 2.0 sharing technology makes it easy for everyone to be a creator of content. For African Digital Diaries, it's potentially the way that someone with access only to an internet cafe could work with pictures.

Well, it's simple to get a simple product together. Whatever's on there, you can stitch into a kind of assembly. But you can't add a soundtrack other than music, so narration falls out the window.

Time to re-shoe

Twenty five years ago in Taos an old Indian trader from the pueblo sold me a pair of elk moccassins. I was twenty-two then. He said they would last me out all of my days.

However, he said that about half way through my life, I should come back to Taos to get them repaired and re-soled. He said I would find someone there who would do it, although it wouldn't be him, and he couldn't tell me who it would be.

Well, I have worn these shoes every day of my life for 25 years, they have walked with me on every continent, they have become almost part of my body, and have done me well. Now it's time to pick up the old guy's invitation to find someone in Taos to help to fix them up for the next 25 years. .

I am now starting to look for the particular leather-worker for whom this work might be waiting. I am sure that in 1986 he imagined that we would get on planes and look for each other. But I think that in the spirit of the age, and to conserve fuel, I will try to fulfill this quest by mail and internet. I've located a few designers of Native American wear, and written to the Taos governor, and we will see what happens.

digital stories in university and in life

University of Houston has a format for students to make digital content as part of their work, and distribute it on Itunes and other channels. See it here.

This implies that the action of narrative and story telling is educationally valid as a part of Higher Ed. Do I agree ? I guess I do. Up to a point. If students qualify for employment by telling stories skillfully, it leads us to a society, and intellctual paradigms, that are becoming less analytical and therefore less applicable, and more based on tales, reports and structures of specific personal experience, so perhaps more immediate.

In a strange way, then, digital technology is taking us away from the rational, enlightened, technocratic connectable world, and back into a distinction world of private stories and myths.

I liked Houston's citation of Daniel Meadows' paeon to what all this means:
"multimedia sonnets from the people" in which "photographs discover the talkies, and the stories told assemble in the ether as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a gaggle of invisible histories which, when viewed together, tell the bigger story of our time, the story that defines who we are."

Daniel is a discovery - thanks Houston ! - and is based in Wales; and here's a lovely little digital story he did about editing and meaning. Click here

This is unlocking some new possibilities for African Digital Diaries. So digital, that the next batch of stories are making their way by post from South Africa right now, on a CD, in an envelope.

Education cuts protest

My son was on the London march against higher tuition fees and was held for 8 hours in the cold along with the others in the "kettle". This is the seminal moment in the political coming of age of this generation - this will be their poll tax. I am hearing stories of gates of schools being heaved off hinges so that kids could break out and attend.

Independent schools are threatening their pupils with expulsion if they join protests. That's interesting.

Link to my guardian comment

Kiva a fallen star

Kiva the online microloan site had always been one of my darlings. I happened on news today that it was a bit of a sham. Effective, but presenting a story in the wrong order: the loan recipients online are already funded, and the money you pledge is recycled to the next tranche not the one that grabbed your eyes. OK, that's business and process. But it hurts because it matters.

Here's the story http://beyondprofit.com/storytelling-tall-tales-on-online-platforms/ and it made me realise that however cumbersome the projects I am working on where I support a single person or work with a known physical group in one place, there is a kind of magic about reality, which the virtual can never achieve.

Great Escape

Who would have thought that refuseniks and escapism would be a viable online brand ? But here we have apparently 18,000 members for a site of city professionals whose avowed aim is to escape from the City. curiouser and curiouser.

Online petitions are they too easy

I got this one today - a stop murdoch - which is literally only 10 seconds to turn into an individual personalised email to the relevant authorities. Too quick ?

http://www.avaaz.org/en/ofcom_no_bskyb_takeover/?98.php?CLICKTF

Online Hero of the day - John Lewis

Today in Glasgow I was locked in for the whole morning with a selection of Scotland's best web and online brains - crunching the challenges and successes of The Daily What, one of my education projects.

But my online hero of the hour is actually John Lewis.com. For making an online experience that really matches the real world experience. How many retailers have their shops and their sites at loggerheads ? But at this one, you really feel the values of the two support each other.

I have purchased this strange bit of metal now in both shop and site, and the two purchases were mutually supportive. I could just type the product code from the paper receipt, into the search box, and immediately get the picture of what I was holding in my hands and puzzling over how to hang four spans of pole with only three supports.

Now thanks to Jonny L I have the solution in just a minute - and no further excuse not to drill it into a wall to hold up the offending curtain pole.

The top blogger assignment

BOSS - “CAN WE PLEASE GET HOLD OF A TOP BLOGGERS’ LIST ?”
ME - “Yes of course”

This task has sat unbudgingly in my to do list for over three weeks (OK one of them was half term). I don't usually prevaricate. But this one is elusive, and it's interesting why.

So, why do we want this list? To inject our excellent content into blogs with ready-made followings, so we don’t have to go through the sweat of building up our own readerships. A cheeky but effective barter trade. But I'm discovering, that it's by no means clear what one would be listing in a list of top bloggers.

Lists of top blogs ? There are a few of these around– usually the rankings are idiosyncratic and reflect the outlook of the compilers and the day they did it. But some have consistent methodology eg Technorati top 100 blogs list which measures daily blog “authority rank” based on a technorati basket of indices; and other rankings which mash other data sources eg quantcast, Alexa etc. Example EBiz, blogstorm

Or, we can look at points of influence and power (people, companies) who are also bloggers Eg Fortune 500 companies with a blog output . Presidents, PMs, CEOs etc also do this or have it done for them. Unfortunately, it doesn't make them influential bloggers.

We can look at media brands which also publish blog output eg Financial Times/blogs, Economist/blogs, Bloomberg blogs etc – pick the influential ones - or at least those we think most approachable and best fitting our brand. Arguably, for our business, some very focussed media brands might work better eg Director of Finance Online with committed blog output see http://dofonline.co.uk/blogs/the-edge/business/cadbury-law-5582144/. Anoraky, but the DOFOs clearly love it.

Another option is to look at major blogging platforms blogspot, wordpress etc which rank top-read blogs in their platforms for example at http://botd.wordpress.com/; or we could select their top bloggers by the tags we are interested in eg Economy http://en.wordpress.com/tag/economy/

What’s not about to turn up is an authoritative compilation of independent bloggers who write from personal and authentic perspectives. Those guys are influential not by size but by quality (of content, of audience) – and those factors don’t register on indices of bigness.

So it looks like we will be compiling our own blogger hall of fame – aggregating all the company employees’ blogrolls and blog subscriptions – it might actually be a good place to start. It’s more likely to reflect the interests of the company ? Or maybe we have found a gap in the market and the next project should be the SBI (Specialist Blogger Index) as a way of expressing the character of a company...

Know when the sun is coming

We launched our new weather service that gives you hour by hour predictions for your own 1 sq km patch of the world is amazing. So I can tell that in half an hour, the rain I am now looking at will blow away and there will be sun. Now I like that - it means I can schedule the trip to the bank so that I have more chance to enjoy it.

The trouble with statistics

Stay for free in Italy thanks to Settimana Baratto

This great italian scheme for paying for your holiday by barter rather than cash (where else but Italy) got me thinking that we could manage a week in Rome with a mixture of English lessons, house exchange (we do that already) and an offer to cook delicious polish or scottish food for the guests. What a fun way to really connect with the people you stay with. And an economic crisis beater too....

Next time you buy at Amazon

This blog in Le Monde Diplomatique takes the french marxian dialectic brilliantly to Amazon's business model. Huge profits for the owners, exploitation and precarious conditions for the workers, they say. Stimulating perspective when all we usually here from Anazon analysts is about long tails and rights deals. Why don't we get this kind of journalism in Britain ?

Berlin Conference

I am trying to get in gear for my session at Berlin Educa 2010 on 2nd Dec. The Daily Content has to be about the process of producing THe Daily What the online news service for schools.

My idea is to get the delegates to work a bit and make that day's edition.

Olive Tree

I got an olive tree coming to me in the post for a spcial sunny spot and a hope to reach the spring again in few months. Working many days a week in my garden office, I count on it to get me inspired at least half the year !