As promised (though late, again), I’ve done a quick analysis of the websites dedicated to Western Sahara. Unfortunately, I was not able to find much that was relevant in the blogosphere by searching for Moroccan Sahara, so I’ve opened the scale of this a bit (!) wider to websites that come up in the first page of a Google search.

Before I get to that, what I did find interesting in the blogosphere were the videos. This was something I hadn’t explored much when I did my earlier Technorati search on Western Sahara. A search for “Western Sahara” brings up videos on culture, news, and the conflict.

A search for “Moroccan Sahara” has some videos on culture and several on travel, but most focus on the conflict.

My Google searches presented similar results to this. “Western Sahara” brings up official country information sources like the CIA World Factbook and a Google map of the region. The remainder of the links on the first page of results seem generally pro-self governance, but are certainly not propaganda.

“Moroccan Sahara” is, again, full of travel links. They’ve clearly won the tourism war. As expected, there is no official country information associated with this search (it would all be under Morocco), but there are 2 other links of interest: www.moroccansahara.net and www.westernsaharaonline.net. They are both pro-Morocco. I find it interesting that Western Sahara Online does not appear on the first page of the “Western Sahara” search.

Finally, a Google search for “Polisario“, the Sahwari movement for independence, includes many news articles and pro-idependence links.

It’s interesting to see that while the pro-Moroccan propaganda forces have cornered the search market for Moroccan Sahara, they have had no success breaking into the top results for either Western Sahara or Polisario. Significantly, none of this has spilled over to affect “Morocco“.

Sorry for the delay on this. I meant to have it done on Tuesday. But here goes:

After a discussion yesterday (ie, Monday) about Internet usage in Africa, I wanted to provide a written overview and some further resources about the topic. Some colleagues and I were discussing international use of social media and we looked at several blogs written in Africa. One of the major questions that came up was why do so many bloggers write in English even if that’s not the primary language of the country?

There are a lot of reasons for this that in my mind include:

• Infrastructure and access to the web
• Levels of education
• Intended audiences
• Major languages on the web

I’ve compiled a list of resources for anyone interested in learning more about this. Rather than describe each link, I’ve placed them into categories so you’ll know what you’ll find there. While some of these links are older, they still provide interesting information about the growth and evolution of Internet use in Africa.

A couple of highlights:

• Africa Internet Map
• Mobile Banking in Africa
• The Digital Gap (from the Economist)
• Opinion Piece on How People Use the Internet in Africa (from 2002)

Who’s Online?
http://www.internetworldstats.com/africa.htm

http://www.africaaction.org/bp/inetall.html (from 1997)
http://www.acacia.org.za/africa_internet_map.htm

http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/back/balancing-act_412.html

What are They Doing?
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/afrfocus/afrfocus021704.html
http://www.africaaction.org/docs01/inet0102.htm
http://gigaom.com/2007/05/27/in-africa-money-not-necessary-for-mobile-banking/
http://whiteafrican.com/2007/12/31/why-the-internet-matters-in-africa/
http://www.africaaction.org/docs01/inet0102.htm

Technology in Africa
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/elecnet.html
http://www.fao.org/News/2001/011205-e.htm
http://www.satsig.net/ivsat-africa.htm
http://www.balancingact-africa.com/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4787422.stm
http://www.suvabay.com/
http://allafrica.com/stories/200807070598.html
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-34486-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
http://www.africaaction.org/docs00/inet0010.htm (from 2000)

Africa on the Web (lists of resources)

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl/

http://www.nai.uu.se/library/resources/guidetoafrica/

http://home.utah.edu/~jwr9311/MENA.html (from 1998 )
http://www.anc.org.za/sanet.html

Popular African Portals
http://www.iafrica.com/
http://allafrica.com/
http://www.woyaa.com/

Discussion about Internet in Africa
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9990626

http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-9437-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2007-12-31-the-father-of-internet-in-africa
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_4/ott/index.html
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/points_of_views/180302_cornu.shtml

Over the past several weeks since my first post on Big Brother Google, I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with the impact Google has – or could have – on my life.

The web has largely been an open space for users in the United States and Europe, as I talked about in my earlier post. Google’s free services add to the utility of and our enjoyment of using the Internet. But the first thing that starts to worry me is the sheer number of brands under the Google umbrella. Simply Google presents their various brands, some home-grown, others purchased. It’s quite an impressive list.

To discover this full list on Google’s own site is impossible. At least not without some serious digging.

One of the interesting links from Simply Google is to the Google Foundation.

Google.org aspires to use the power of information and technology to address the global challenges of our age: climate change, poverty and emerging disease. In collaboration with experienced partners working in each of these fields, we will invest our resources and tap the strengths of Google’s employees and global operations to advance five major initiatives: Develop Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal (RE<C), RechargeIT, Predict and Prevent, Inform and Empower to Improve Public Services, and Fuel the Growth of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises.

I really like this idea, and I tend to be far more comfortable when companies have clearly named foundations associated with them. Then consumers know where their money goes and everything seems far more above board.

And I think that’s a big part of what has been bothering me with Google – transparency. Robert Scoble has an interesting post on this and sums it up nicely with:

I think Google has to be very transparent, very warm, and very open when it comes to privacy and the data it’s collecting on all of us and to many of us it’s coming across as closed, cold, and opaque.

And we all know the history with Microsoft being closed, cold, and opaque.

That’s one side of my growing unease. But the other is how much we’re coming to rely on the company. I have 2 gmail accounts (and am considering setting up a third just for this blog). I use their calendar to keep my schedule and their reader to read the ridiculous number of feeds I subscribe to. I do nearly all of my searches on Google, as does 70% of the rest of the US.

Putting aside privacy fears, the big problem with this is that Google holds us all hostage. I’m not suggesting the company will do anything ‘evil’, but a very real concern for me is that these services will do down or otherwise not be available when I need them. This happened earlier this month when Google Docs went down for about 45 minutes. In the past, my gmail account(s) have been unavailable for extended periods of time. While this hasn’t happened in the last 2 years, it’s still a concern, especially because I have been using one of my accounts for work (and yet gmail is still far more reliable than the email system at work).

The third factor that’s creeping me out is the recent ruling in the Viacom/YouTube case. Even if Google doesn’t use the data it gathers from us for evil, someone else may access it through subpoenas or by hacking their systems (it’s not impossible).

Despite all of this, I still really like a lot of Google’s tools and plan to keep using them. They’re generally reliable (even though they have never promised me their services will be available for as long as I want them), well-designed, and very useful.

The Internet is supposed to change the entire world, but I’m still waiting for it to change my healthcare.

Well, that is a bit of an overstatement. My doctor and all of the physicians in her practice use electronic medical records (EMRs) to keep patient records. In fact, since the day I first saw her, I’ve never had a paper record at her office. She comes in with her mini-laptop, plugs it into the cord that’s in every patient room, and quickly runs through my most recent list of prescriptions to make sure she’s got everything up to date. Yeah, she rocks my world.

But I read a couple of interesting articles recently about the Internet revolutionizing healthcare delivery. The first described what I would imagine the future of primary care will be – going to the see the doctor online. It failed. Miserably. The WSJ Health Blog reported:

At Brewer’s office the technical end works as promised, but patients don’t really seem interested. They don’t want to pay the (usually unreimbursed) $30 for the online visit with Brewer, and they’s rather just send a regular email, even though it’s vulnerable to snooping.

Before I get into the mechanics of this, let me first say that I’m disappointed that the WSJ would cop out this much – they’re reporting on Dr. Brewer, who happens to be a columnist for the Journal. They do disclose this in the posting, but it just makes me less interested in the story. I mean, if he’s a columnist for them, let him write the story himself, don’t “report” on it.

Anyways, Brewer and his colleagues have an “expensive” website ($1800 a year) that they can no longer afford to maintain because patients aren’t using their $30 a pop online visits. I’ve got a lot of issues with claiming that “patients don’t really seem interested.” There are a lot more questions that need to be answered about this story:

• What kind of private practice can’t afford spending $1800 a year on their website? And in what world does that count as an “expensive” professional website? Granted, the group is also paying per transaction, but that shouldn’t be a problem for them right now if they don’t have many transactions!
• Is Forrest, IL the right place to test this kind of initiative? Are people very spread out so getting to the doctor’s office isn’t easy? Or is it a very urban environment like DC where people don’t have time to get to the doctor?
• What kind of promotion did the practice do for this site? Were their patients aware that it existed?
• Is the patient population in for Forrest Family Practice a tech savvy group? Are they comfortable using the internet to communicated with their doctor?

Brewer created a forum on the WSJ site to ask about people’s opinion about email with their doctors. Generally, the response was pretty positive – the big exception being doctors worried about liability.

So is it too crazy to think about virtual doctor’s visits? Apparently not in the UK.

Cancer Research UK, a cancer charity somewhat similar to the American Cancer Society (ACS) in the US, has launched Cancer Chat, “a forum with a difference.” It’s an online forum like many others dedicated to talking about your experience with cancer. The difference is that this forum is moderated. They’re calling it “an information safety net.” I call it moderated because they’ve got a team of staff members making sure patients are not subjected to false information or quack cures. This isn’t a bad thing, let’s just call it what it is.

The really interesting thing is that the website doesn’t trumpet this fact. Patients and caregivers use the internet to share experiences with one another. They also search for information about diagnoses, treatments, and more. For both of these, users seek assurances that information is accurate. So I would think that the moderation would be a big selling point. Strange that they don’t take more advantage of it.

Anyways, it will be interesting to see how Cancer Chat works in the long term. Looking at the discussions thus far, it doesn’t look like it’s been so successful yet. After a week, the symptoms, testing and diagnosis section has 4 topics with a grand total of 23 posts.

Greetings web denizens. I am excited to join you in world of the Internets.

Ok, enough corniness. Since I have been reading Dan Gillmor’s We the Media, I thought I would use this first post to reflect on my personal interactions with the Internet over the years. Gillmor’s book is a history of the Internet and its impact on journalism, journalists, and readers over the past twenty-odd years. But it also reminds us how new the web really is.

I can remember using one of the early search engines back in 1995. I’m pretty sure it was Yahoo!, but it could have been another now-defunct site with an equally nonsensical name. I cringe now at the hazy memory of that page layout. At the time, it was so cool.

I also remember visiting chatrooms – something I would be horrified to admit about myself today (no, I don’t visit them anymore). Discussion forums, G-chat, Facebook, and other social networking communities are all part of my online life. But chatrooms?! Not today. As the Internet gained more subscribers, and people I knew came online, I didn’t want to be talking to people I didn’t know. Especially not in a single mass conversation.

Then there was ICQ, my first personal email account on hotmail, voice chatting online, and Yahoo! games. AIM became the messaging system of choice in college, and now my friends, colleagues, and I use G-chat almost exclusively.

When I adopted each of these new tools, I didn’t truly reflect on the impact these new technologies had on me. Gillmor spells out how these tools made journalism more participatory and broke down old barriers between media and audience. It also created higher expectations from the audience, people like me who were just as up-to-date on web technology as – or more so than – the media.

I realize that these same expectations apply to me, not necessarily in a professional sense (although working in science and communications does create some pressure), but in a personal way. If I want to stay in contact with friends, I have to be on the same networks as them and more importantly, I have to be active. If my profile, or my blog, or my website sits without being updated for weeks on end, in a sense, I’m not maintaining those friendships.