Social Media - Interesting BBC articles - Social Media, Future and Egypt Protests

For my 200th blog post I was inspired to write by reading of 2 BBC articles. One is about the role of Social Media in the Tunisian and Egypt Protests.

Internet role in Egypt's protests - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12400319. - 9 February 2011 Last updated at 06:00 - By Anne Alexander - University of Cambridge.

This article discusses the way Social Media acted as an aid to organisation of the protests, and that this worked in conjunction with ways of spreading the word and existing organisations. The Egyptian Governments shutting down of the internet was not successful because these other ways of organising were already established through a mixture of word of mouth and Social Media

The other article is about the future of Social Media, and the other about the future of friends: Who can topple Facebook? - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2011/02/the_future_of_friends_-_who_ca.html - Rory Cellan-Jones 08:00 UK time, Wednesday, 9 February 2011.

This article also mentions the radio 4 program on this subject, which is available at - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y8xdv, with links to the previous 2 episodes. The article argues whether Facebooks dominance is likely to continue or whether new competitors will challenge this.

Social media 'could transform public services' - BBC website

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8382252.stm - By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News.

This article describes the usefulness of Web 2.0 in providing user involvement in health and public services. This report is from the MyPublicServices conference. This provides a useful solution to current problems that centralised systems don't give patients and users enough involvement, but plans such as relying on Google tools for the management of systems are misguided. This conference investigated ways of involving users to a degree that is practical.

"Social media could transform the NHS and other public services in the same way that file-sharing changed the music industry, a conference has heard.

Growing use of tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, offered an opportunity to reinvent services, delegates heard.

The MyPublicServices event debated ways to harness these conversations, many of which are critical, to make services better and more inclusive.

If this was not done, many services would be undermined, speakers said.

"It's happened to the music and travel industries and it's going to happen to public services," said Dr Paul Hodgkin, founder of the Patient Opinion site that organised the MyPublicServices conference.

Said Dr Hodgkin: "The question is how do we cope with it in a useful and productive way and not spend decades beating each other up?" "

Here are more interesting articles about this debate -

Tories attack leaked five-year IT plan as 'unambitious' - BBC News Website - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8387972.stm.

The politics of crowdsourcing - BBC News Website -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/12/the_politics_of_crowdsourcing.html -

- "Politicians in opposition and in government are latching onto the idea of using the web to engage with the wider public
Rory Cellan-Jones
BBC's technology correspondent"

- "This leak isn't likely to generate lurid headlines, as the report on transforming government by using "interactive (web 2.0) tools and processes, cloud computing technology and service-oriented architecture (SOA)" isn't exactly dynamite.
Still, the Conservatives have come up with quite a clever idea - they've put the document online and are inviting the public to comment on every part of it as they frame the party's response. "

Charting the Digital Revolution

I've written an article for Huliq news based on this BBC news article, about a very interesting series, and interactive project the BBC are working on -

Russell Barnes Producer, Digital Revolution

"It was just 20 years ago that a young computer programmer called Tim Berners-Lee approached his supervisor at CERN with a blueprint for linking information online that we know today as the World Wide Web."

"...Digital Revolution (working title), a landmark series of programmes for BBC Two that examines precisely this question." - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8144570.stm.

My article on this topic written for Huliq News - http://www.huliq.com/1/83418/charting-digital-revolution.

Google unveils 'smarter search' - BBC News

This is an interesting article about Google's plans, and explains that they are keen to develop search tools that make use of the Semantic Web. So I refernce and link to this article below

By Maggie Shiels Technology Reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

"Web giant Google has unveiled new products that it says will push search in a new direction.

Google is using so-called semantic web technology to leverage the underlying data on websites to enhance results."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8047076.stm.

This article is also relevant to smarter search -

Wolfram 'search engine' goes live

"A web tool hailed as a significant rival to search giant Google has gone live to the public.

Wolfram Alpha is called a computation knowledge engine rather than a search engine and wants to change the way people use online data.

It aims to give people direct answers to queries rather than send them to other sites where they may find what they are seeking.

The system is the brainchild of British-born physicist Stephen Wolfram."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8052798.stm.