State Department goes YouTube

November 26, 2008 11:35 am · Filed under Internet stuff

Sean McCormack at the State Department is really an innovator in using social media for the government. Kudos to him and the dipnote blog (is it just me or does their logo look very Obama-esque?

You may think that its post-9/11 policies are out of date, but the State Department’s venture into the digital world is nothing to scoff at. Its year-old “DipNote” blog has 2 million viewers, and top spokesman Sean McCormack has just gone YouTube in the diplomat’s bid to bring State into the 21st century. “It gives a face and voice to the department,” he tells Whispers. Going online wasn’t easy, of course. It took two years to update the press room and website, but now, McCormack’s ideas are in demand from other departments and even foreign governments looking to beef up their online presence. One discovery: The blog and his YouTube press conferences attract different audiences. The blog, done by midlevel experts on a bunch of issues, is big with older viewers. His YouTube meets, where people E-mail their questions for him to answer, lures a younger and quizzical crowd. -Via Washington Whispers

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Your Brain on Google

November 21, 2008 11:47 am · Filed under Internet stuff

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhLnoZFCDBM]

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TechTalk: Disruptive Technologies

November 17, 2008 9:24 pm · Filed under TechTalk

I was listening to C-SPAN radio (nerd alert) the other day and heard a reporter from Forbes magazine discussing the economy, in which he talked about the role of disruptive technologies. In essence, his argument was that because business media in particular has been undercut by the Internet, there is a lack of capable, competent business reporters and business news outlets. As a consequence, we have seen an “innumeration” of business news and therefore our current understanding of the financial system is out of whack. His analysis is that our economy, while under some stress, is not nearly as “depressed” as some have prognosticated.

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TechTalk: Machine Translation

November 2, 2008 8:29 pm · Filed under TechTalk

Personally, I’ve always felt limited in my ability to read by my knowledge of only one language. I think that in the future, we’ll probably be able to translate with better accuracy the materials written in languages unfamiliar to us.

Just for fun, here’s my post translated via  google translator:

像一些其他谁已经公布，我一定救我酒精有关的资料，我组的介绍星期三。但是我非常有兴趣听听的读/图书组将出席。

就个人而言，我一直认为在我有限的阅读能力由我的知识，只有一种语言。我认为，在未来，我们也许能够更好的翻译准确的书面材料不熟悉的语言给我们。

Here’s a humorous article from 2000 about machine translation’s past and future.

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