Social media

See the following -

Boston Marathon Bombing Spotlights Good And Potential Bad Of Social Media, mHealth In Disasters

Tom Sullivan | Government Health IT | April 17, 2013

While Boston area hospitals and police turned to Twitter during Monday’s Marathon Bombing, and Chinese people mourned the tragic loss of a national on social media, several federal agencies spread the word about resources at the ready for disasters. Read More »

Broadband Spreading Across Africa

Santosh Anchan | IDN-InDepthNews | February 26, 2012

Africa has been the world's fastest growing region over the last decade in terms of mobile penetration. While fixed line penetration has stagnated at 4% in the continent, mobile has grown at an astonishing rate to 45% with North Africa leading at 73%. However broadband is lagging behind considerably when compared to other continents.

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Can Africa’s Mobile Phones And Maps Usher In A Governance Revolution?

Michael Keller | Txchologist | December 10, 2013

For crime victims in the Kenyan town of Lamet Umoja, where before there was silence, now there is Twitter. Read More »

Can Citizen Journalism Move Beyond Crisis Reporting In Traditional Newsrooms?

Trevor Knoblich | FrontlineSMS | May 9, 2013

The aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings demonstrated yet another significant marker for citizen journalism. Felix Salmon, in an excellent post on the Reuters blog, wrote that the manhunt for a suspect in the bombings “in many ways represented the first fully interactive news story.” The crisis again demonstrated the value — and risks — of citizen reporting via social media. Read More »

Can Citizen Journalism Move Beyond Crisis Reporting?

Trevor Knoblich | PBS.org | June 9, 2013

The aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings demonstrated yet another significant marker for citizen journalism. [...] The crisis again demonstrated the value — and risks — of citizen reporting via social media. Read More »

Choosing An Open-Source CMS, Part 2: Why We Use Joomla

Robert L. Mitchell | Computerworld | February 19, 2013

In this, the second installment of our three-part series on finding the best open-source content management system (CMS) for your needs, we asked two organizations that use Joomla to explain why they felt that Joomla was the best choice for them, how the transition went, and whether they're happy with the results.
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CISPA Is Back: FAQ On What It Is And Why It's Still Dangerous

Mark M. Jaycox and Kurt Opsahl | Electronic Frontier Foundation | February 25, 2013

The privacy-invasive bill known as CISPA—the so-called “cybersecurity” bill—was reintroduced in February 2013. Just like last year, the bill has stirred a tremendous amount of grassroots activism because it carves a loophole in all known privacy laws and grants legal immunity for companies to share your private information. Read More »

Cloud, Social, Big Data And Mobile Technology Reshapes One African City

Joe K. Mensah | The Atlantic | December 12, 2013

As one of Africa's fastest urbanizing cities, Accra, Ghana needs to recognize the challenges it faces as it continues to grow. Read More »

College Students Tackle PTSD at First DC Hackathon

More than 50 college students from across the world gathered this previous weekend at HackDC 2015, the first Hackathon dedicated to crowdsourcing innovative ways to address the serious problem of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by creating mobile applications and solutions. The event, which started on Friday, went through Sunday afternoon. Held at the Richard J. Ernst Community Cultural Center in the Annandale Campus of the Northern Virginia Community Colleges (NVCC), HackDC 2015 provided the participants with access to food, sleeping facilities, and showers so that they could work straight through the weekend. 

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Crisis Maps: Harnessing The Power Of Big Data To Deliver Humanitarian Assistance

Patrick Meier | Forbes | May 2, 2013

Crisis-mapping technology has emerged in the past five years as a tool to help humanitarian organizations deliver assistance to victims of civil conflicts and natural disasters. Crisis-mapping platforms display eyewitness reports submitted via e-mail, text message, and social media. Read More »

CrisisNET Speedily Aggregates Social Data In Disaster Situations

Katie Collins | Wired | June 10, 2014

Not-for-profit software company Ushahidi has launched CrisNET, an open-source platform that it claims will dramatically reduce the amount of time that it takes journalists, analysts and humanitarian organisations to get their hands on well-structured, crowdsourced data in the midst of conflict and disaster. Read More »

Crowd-Funding Draws Donations For Sandy Relief

Brett Zongker | ABC News | December 22, 2012

In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, some who lost their homes or businesses have turned to crowd-funding websites to elicit a faster and more direct response than they could expect from the government or traditional charities. Read More »

Crowdfunding For Innovation And Sustainability

Matthew Yeomans | The Guardian | November 22, 2012

Kickstarter has just hit the UK, but there are now a host of crowdfunding startups that focus on business creation and innovation Read More »

Crowdfunding Healthcare Innovation: Q & A With Alex Fair, CEO Of MedStartr

Kasia Galica | Informatics for Consumer Health | November 13, 2012

In this ICH Blog post, we spotlight MedStartr, a new health-related crowdfunding platform. Crowdfunding for health-related projects is an innovative idea that enables the consumer to decide what health information technology applications or devices are important and ready to come on the market. Read More »

Data for the Public Good

Alex Howard | O'Reilly Radar | February 22, 2012

From healthcare to finance to emergency response, data holds immense potential to help citizens and government.

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