Operation: Budding Genius

John Prescott to lead internet campaign

2009-03-15T21:45:00.001Z

Report on the Guardian website

"John Prescott has been chosen as the unlikely leader of Labour's general election campaign on the internet, as the party prepares to launch a low-budget battle for a fourth term in government"

What on earth is going on? John Prescott does not strike me as the most computer literate member of the Labour party. On further reading the name Alistair Campbell appears

Last night Alastair Campbell, former director of communications under Tony Blair, who also has a large following online, said it was clear Prescott was succeeding in motivating Labour supporters online in a way nobody else could. "You cannot imagine a cabinet minister getting the huge support he did for a campaign on bankers' bonuses. What JP has shown is that he has an ability to cut through to voters that needs harnessing. Because he is no longer a cabinet minister, he can be a bit edgier. It is about making it fun. It is part of modern campaigning."

The knives are out for you Gordon Brown and it looks like Campbell and co are sharpening them to boot

One is twittering: Her Majesty the Queen's latest foray online - Telegraph

2009-03-05T13:35:00.001Z

Article from The Telegraph

"She emails her grandchildren and her Christmas message appears on YouTube. Now the Queen has taken a further bold technological step by becoming the first member of the Royal family to have an official engagement tracked on Twitter."

Wonder what her user name is?

Eye of God pictured in space

2009-02-26T12:55:00.002Z

European astronomers have taken a stunning photo of a Big Brother-style cosmic eye, nicknamed the Eye of God, staring down from space.photo was taken with a giant telescope at the European Southern Observatory, high on a mountaintop at La Silla in Chile. It is so detailed that a close-up reveals distant galaxies within the central eyeball. read more Telegraph

2009-02-23T12:14:00.002Z

Further to an earlier article in which I commented on the relaxed attitude of the British public in the wake of the economic crisis, The Guardian report

Police are preparing for a "summer of rage" as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned

The article reveals that it is

middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations who may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.

At last the country is waking up to the reality of the situation and making their voice heard. The government may choose not to listen but the message needs to get through. United we stand, divided we fall

Six months in Afghanistan footage | World news | guardian.co.uk

2009-02-23T01:06:00.000Z

Six months in Afghanistan footage | World news | guardian.co.uk

A series of films by John D McHugh about what life is really like for the US military in Afghanistan

Charlie Brooker: Exciting new crisp flavours? More like a dirty protest in mass-produced packets

2009-02-17T00:28:00.001Z

Amusing article by Charlie Brooker about the launch of Walkers flavours competition finalists on The Guardian website :

"Exciting new crisp flavours? More like a dirty protest in mass-produced packets. Walkers are keen to point out that no squirrels were harmed in the making of their crisps"

The competition is split into three stages

Stage one: the public were invited to suggest exotic new flavours.
Stage two: Six flavours were chosen for the public to vote for their favourite.
Stage three: The top flavour becomes a permanent member of the Walkers line-up.

The finalists are

Builders Breakfast
Crispy Duck and Hoison
Cajun Squirrel
Chilli and Chocolate
Fish and Chips
Onion Bhaji

I still remember the hedgehof flavour and traffic warden flavour which were introduced in the 1980's, they never caught on either

The rise of the twittering classes

2009-02-09T17:39:00.002Z

The rise of the twittering classes is something that has received a wide amount of publicity in the British press this week. Stephen Fry used Twitter to tell his followers (OVER 100000 of them) that he was stuck in a lift at Centrepoint in London. Reports appeared the next day in most of the daily newspapers more notably The Guardian The Telegraph and The Independent

Johnathan Ross delighted his Twitter followers at the BAFTA awards by working in the word salad as part of his performance. The Guardian's live Baftas blog,suggests the crossover between 'Bafta nominee/buddy/ligger' and 'Twitterer' is not particularly big, and possibly non-existent. Twitter fans at home, meanwhile, were simultaneously jumping up and down on the sofa yelling 'He said salad! He said salad!' to the bemusement of all around them"

Facebook at five: The toughest challenge is yet to come - Telegraph

2009-02-06T16:08:00.002Z

How long before the popularity of Facebook fades? An article in the Telegraph, comments on the future of Facebook: Facebook at five: The toughest challenge is yet to come - Telegraph: "For many internet users, especially youngsters, having a Facebook account is as important as having a mobile phone. Social events are organised through Facebook's pages, and it is used by millions to share photos and videos.
However, the next five years look a lot tougher for Facebook. The honeymoon period is well and truly over, and there is anecdotal evidence, at least, that 'Facebook fatigue' is setting in with some users. The greatest difficulty the website faces is 'user stickiness' – remaining sufficiently dynamic, interesting and relevant to retain its members"

Are government ministers allowed to poke, tweet and use social media? | Technology | The Guardian

2009-02-06T08:53:00.002Z

An article in The Guardian: asks : Are government ministers allowed to poke, tweet and use social media? "This week, the government's Power of Information taskforce set out a list of 25 urgent actions for the public sector machine - from Downing Street to local councils and NHS organisations - to take to embrace social networking, blogging and other such phenomena."

MediaShift . Journalists Still a-Twitter About Social Media | PBS

2009-02-05T17:15:00.000Z

Excellent post on journalists fascination with social media site Twitter

MediaShift . Journalists Still a-Twitter About Social Media | PBS: "Journalists are obsessed with Twitter. Obsessed. They use it, talk about it, analyze it, deconstruct it, reconstruct it, love it, hate it, capitalize on it, become experts on it, monetize it, argue about it, and become micro-famous on it. They are mesmerized with what it is and they are as giddy as Tom Cruise on Oprah just thinking about what it could be."

Digital Britain - Interim Report

2009-02-03T15:27:00.003Z

A comprehensive analysis report of our digital economy titled Digital Britain , assesses the UK’s readiness fully to exploit the dramatic shift to digital technology as the basis of huge parts of our economy and private lives, drawing on expertise from across Government, regulators and industry.

The Interim Report has just been released

The State of Childhood

2009-02-01T13:11:00.001Z

According to "The Good Childhood Inquiry,

The state of childhood is one of the recurring topics of our times. Today’s children and young people live in an era of rapid change, which poses particular challenges for their growth and development. In this climate, there is growing concern about the health and well-being of our children. Politicians, academia and the media alike ponder how best to bring up the nation’s children."

The Good Childhood Inquiry, the UK’s first independent national inquiry into the nature of chilhood will release findings this week.

It will consider the following key questions:
• What are the conditions for a good childhood?
• What obstacles exist to those conditions?
• What changes could be made that would be likely
to improve childhood?

Initial findings suggest

Our children and young people suffer from higher incidences of mental and physical ill-health than their European contemporaries. As a society we share a damaging ambivalence towards children: preoccupied with protecting our own children from harm, we often fail to reach out to those who need our attention most. And all the while our young people are continually subjected to pressure to achieve, behave and even consume like adults at an ever earlier age.

Alistair Darling pulls out of Davos

2009-01-29T17:37:00.001Z

Times Online reports that Alistair Darling has pulled out of out of Davos -

"A spokeswoman for the Treasury confirmed that Mr Darling would not be going to the event, and had been due to fly to the WEF earlier this week. It also emerged today that David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, has also pulled out of Davos.

A spokesman for the Treasury said it was decided that since a number of people Mr Darling had been due to meet had pulled out of Davos, his time would be better spent doing other things."

What better things could Mr Darling be turning his attention to? Rescuing the failing economy would be the first thing that springs to mind.

The Telegraph report "that the UK will be at the bottom of the league table of major developed countries this year, in the weakest year for the global economy since the Second World War"

This means that the UK is set to face a worse recession than any other major country in the world. The future looks bleak however according to a report in The Australian Post"FOR a nation that has just been officially told by the International Monetary Fund that it is about to suffer the worst recession of any developed country since 1945, Britain is remarkably relaxed.

There are no threats of mass strikes by workers fearing for their jobs, no calls for a crisis election and certainly no hints of the street riots that have recently been seen in several other European countries."

Although I do not condone the actions of those in other countries at least they are making their feelings known to those in charge. A relaxed attitude is one that has served to place Britain at the bottom of the league table. . British politicians NEED to get a grip of the situation, instead of the constant bickering between the different political parties, the government needs to work as a team that mean TOGETHER. A viable solution can only be achieved if all parties are in agreement.

Google Earth accused of aiding terrorists - Times Online

2009-01-28T21:23:00.001Z

An Indian Court has been called to ban Google Earth amid suggestions the online satellite imaging was used to help plan the terror attacks that killed more than 170 people in Mumbai last month.

read more | digg story

GAZA DEC Appeal

2009-01-27T21:39:00.000Z

Exclusive: YouTube Will Soon Let Big Content Partners Bring Their Own Ads

2009-01-26T08:43:00.001Z

Exclusive report from Tech crunch, You Tube are currently making plans to allow the big media giants to profit from advertising revenue. This is a big step for the future of broadcasting and points the way forward in terms of the industry.

"Big media companies have always had a love-hate relationship with YouTube. They don’t know whether to sue YouTube for abetting copyright infringement or get in bed with it because it is the biggest Web video game in town. YouTube is trying to convince them that love is better than war by giving them a cut of advertising revenues from their videos that appear on YouTube, regardless of who put them there."
read more on Techcrunch:

UNSEEN GAZA

2009-01-23T19:48:00.001Z

A report in The Independent argues that There have been two versions of the assault on Gaza played out over the past three weeks. One is the moderated account aired in the West; the other is the unexpurgated account of civilian deaths filmed in vivid close-up inside Gaza.

The Channel 4 documentary Unseen Gaza explored the the war on Gaza from the media perspective as foreign news organisations were refused access into the Gaza Strip. John Snow offers an insight into the frustation expressed by UK journalists as the IDF created a closed military zone along the borders of Israel and moved reporters on to a specially designated hill overlooking the territory, but away from the fighting.

An article on which I read on Media Channel indicates that the ban on journalists is a form of censorship and questions the motives behind the Israeli decision. The ban did not however did not apply to journalists already living and working in Gaza although it seems that they were targeted during the conflict.

What gives Israel the right to ban foreign media? Surely that only happens in countries such as Zimbawe and China whose leaders run oppressive regimes and inflict fear or terror on its citizens without intereference from the outside world.

Rescuing economy tops Obama's 100-day agenda | Reuters

2009-01-19T21:33:00.001Z

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A calm manner, rhetorical gifts and the promise of new ideas all contributed to Barack Obama's rise to the U.S. presidency as Americans put their trust in him to rescue the economy from its worst crisis in decades.

Now the public and the financial markets want to see if he can deliver.

When he takes the oath of office on Tuesday, Obama will inherit a deepening recession, a shattered financial system, a housing-market meltdown and trillion-dollar budget deficits well into the future.

Well aware that stemming the economic decline is the No. 1 priority for his first 100 days in office, Obama is diving in.

Rescuing economy tops Obama's 100-day agenda | Reuters

Facebook Users Go to War over Gaza - TIME

2009-01-15T08:38:00.000Z

Facebook Users Go to War over Gaza - TIME: "Social-networking websites may have started out as online cliques where friends could swap opinions on music, pop culture and other bits of innocuous personal trivia. But as the conflict in Gaza has unfolded, it's becoming evident that sites like Facebook are increasingly being used to express political views, adding an acrimonious, even menacing undertone to what were once lighthearted online forums."

Who are Hamas?

2009-01-14T16:25:00.000Z

The largest Palestinian militant Islamist organisation is Hamas, formed in 1987 at the beginning of the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising against Israel's occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.Hamas takes its name from the Arabic initials for the Islamic Resistance Movement.Branded a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and the EU, Hamas are seen by its supporters as a legitimate freedom fighting force defending Palestinians from a brutal military occupation

BBC NEWS article

George Bush Does Not Care About......

2009-01-14T14:55:00.008Z

"I think President Bush might very well be the worst president in U.S. history," -Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joseph Ellis (2008)

As the Bush administration draws to its logical conclusion I have been reflecting on what aspect of his Presidency he will be best remembered.

The comments made by Kayne West in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?

Maybe for his war on terror or should that be his war of terror which he inflicted on the innocent Iraqi people who have died as a result of his search for invisible Weapons of Mass Destruction?

His game of hide and seek then hide again with Osama Bin Laden?

Or maybe his vision of a world in which "freedom will prevail" sorry I mean his vision that America will prevail especially in offering support to the genocide of thousands of innocent Palestinians.

By authorising his signature on a memorandum which stated that the Third Genenva Convention regarding the treatment of enemy prisoners taken in wartime, did not apply to members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban sealing the fate for those abused at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay?

Those will be some of the things that I will most remember, well done you did your father proud Mr Bush, and you get the credit for his legacy.

Life is like a box of chocolates!!!

China blocks 41 websites for distributing porn-China-World-The Times of India

2009-01-12T21:38:00.001Z

BEIJING: China has blocked 41 websites after getting Google and other search engines to apologise for carrying porn and lewd content. This is among the measures taken by the government to 'purify' the Internet during a month-long campaign launched last week." Read more:

How the press has been reporting Gaza - Guardian Article

2009-01-12T07:35:00.001Z

Newspapers are supposed to be better than TV at putting over context. But they rarely are. This has always been a problem in the Israeli-Arab conflict where, as Jonathan Freedland observed in the Guardian, there is a 'Newtonian chain of claimed action and reaction that can stretch back to infinity'. Lack of context normally works against Palestinians who are portrayed as 'terrorists' and wild 'bomb-throwing militants' bent on undermining a well-ordered, western-style state. By banning foreign journalists from entering Gaza, Israel helped turn the context problem against itself. Nearly all the stories and pictures came from local Palestinian reporters and photographers.

read more on how the press has been reporting Gaza | Media | The Guardian

Q&A - What's next in the Gaza conflict?

2009-01-02T17:39:00.002Z

Jan 2 (Reuters) - Israel pressed on with its seven-day-old air attack on Hamas militants in Gaza on Friday and the death toll reached 424 Palestinians, with 2,000 more wounded in the blockaded coastal strip. This article from Reuters answers key questions about the conflict

read more | digg story

United Chipmunks of Whatever

2008-12-20T19:06:00.003Z

A random attempt at singing like a chipmunk on acid :D:D