As my great grandfather used to say...

We shall go on to the end, we shall blog in France, we shall blog on the seas and oceans, we shall blog with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Internet, whatever the cost may be, we shall blog on the beaches, we shall blog on the landing grounds, we shall blog in the fields and in Starbucks, we shall blog on Capitol Hill;

We shall never surrender...

Are you a digital citizen?

Take the BBC Quiz and find out!

Have we blogged enough...?!

Last time I checked, my blog was up to 50 pages of a Dr J double spaced paper, so I think I have earned a day off!

Run, IPDI, Run...!

You've read our reports, you've met the staff, now you can vote for IPDI in the Politics Online Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics.

Just go to the voting page at the Politics Online site and cast your vote for IPDI!

Here's what they say about us:

During its six years' existence, the Institute has established a national and international reputation as the premier center for the study of the Internet's effect on politics, producing practical studies that address the larger questions about the Internet and politics

IPDI's staff have developed materials during that time that have helped academics, advocates, and practitioners understand the potential power of this new and evolving technology. The variety of scholars, real world political operatives and the Politics On Line Conference make them on of the most unique and comprehensive actors in the field of politics and the Internet. The Institute provides a balance of dreamers and data driven realists who tell us what we know and help push us to contemplate a variety of ideas and concepts we should get to know. www.ipdi.org

So cast your vote for IPDI at Politics Online!

Apparently, teenagers have a short attention span...

Who'd have guessed it? According to Jakob Nielsen's article, teenagers failed to successfully complete transactions on a website because they have a "dramatically lower patience level." I am not sure he needed to conduct a study in two countries to reach that conclusion - a couple of hours in classroom with a bunch of 16 year olds would have told you that!

However, some of Nielsen's other observations were more insightful. The issue of them having 'less sophisticated research strategies' is an interesting point. I admit I would assume that teenagers are very adept at using Google and eBay to find information about getting the best price for something.

But I also remember how impulsive I could be as a teenager - if I saw something I intended to buy, I would want to buy it there and then. It would need my parents patient intervention to suggest that some more research could pay dividends.

In fact, I remember learning these skills by watching my dad do research for our first VCR (when I was a teenager, long play and infra-red remote control was quite the revelation). In the end, he found the one he wanted for 50% cheaper than it was advertised everywhere else, and with a better warranty. Mind you, I was the only one in the family who could set the timer :)

But these days, many adults have yet to understand how to use services like eBay and Froogle to track down the best prices. So who will teach our teenagers how to shop the most economically online?

Identifying the Influentials...

Reading IPDI's report on the Influentials, one thing strikes me - on a campaign, I need to know asap when one of them offers to help my campaign! But how do I do that?

Even since this report was written, I would be confident in putting forward the view that people volunteering, donating and getting involved online has increased considerably. I doubt it is any longer the case that all of these people are Influentials, as defined in the report.

As such, we need to find a way to identify them as the sign up. One way hinted at in the report is via the sign up screen for volunteers. I would suggest trying to modify the form so that you ask enough questions to identify that this person is most likely an Influential, and have a flag in the contact system to identify them as such.

If you follow the guidelines for putting them to work, you can then have a dynamic list that will automatically include that person next time you design communications targeted at Influentials.

In my experience, it is always preferable to have rules identifying such characteristics, rather than leaving it to the whim of an individual to decide if someone should be included.

Are we really changing the world?

I couldn't quite put my finger on what I felt was the over-arching theme in many of the race and digital divide discussions until I saw this quote at the end of the The African American Blogging Thing.

... blogging is representative of existing dynamics as much as it is a new system to change those dynamics.

And that is the point isn't it? We have talked much in class and outside about how the Internet has been so revolutionary by increasing civic participation and motivating whole groups of previously disenchanted citizens to rejoin the political fray. But hasn't it just done that amongst the groups that were politically interested anyway, just turned off by the partisan political process - in other words, people who are predominantly white with above average incomes?

Reading the articles this week, I wonder how many of the population that progressive blogs seek to speak for ever actually read blogs like DailyKos and MyDD? In reality, I'm going to guess that the readership profile of DailyKos doesn't look that much different to the people who came out to support Howard Dean.

I don't get any real sense that the Internet has really changed the dynamic as much as we would like to believe. It is often said that the Republicans need an average turnout - low or high favors the Democrats. One reason for this is that the nearly 50% of people who don't vote are presumed to be more likely to vote Democrat. Once again, many of the these people didn't vote in 2004, when we saw the most concentrated GOTV efforts ever seen.

What can we do to bring these people into political process? I don't think it is just a matter of access to computers - reading the article above, it seems to suggest that African Americans are online and reading blogs, but feel no connection to something like political blogs which they see as a predominantly white culture. Surely the democrats need to spend less time attacking each other, and more time working out ways to connect with their natural supporters?

Mobile technology in action...

The Economist's article makes the case for mobile phones being a foundation for advancing economic development in developing countries. However, it was interesting to read an article on the BBC about it actually being put into practice.

The article is about Iqbal Quadir who founded a company in Bangladesh called Grameen Phone, a company which provides cellular phones via a sustainable financing mechanism in rural villages where no telecommunications services have previously existed thereby giving poor entrepreneurs access to a phone to operate a business. The program has been a huge success, with more than 3.5 million subscribers across the country.

The impact in many places had been dramatic, especially for the women in the village:

"Known as Grameen phone ladies, these women provide villagers with a vital link to services such as hospitals and to relatives both at home and abroad, in a country with the lowest number of phones in South Asia...A woman with a mobile becomes important in a village. This changes the power distribution."

However, it is interesting to note in the article that he does not argue that the people now need Internet access to avoid living in a digital divide. As he points out, there are other things rather more important before getting Internet access:

"If you bring electricity to villages, you can bring jobs. Electricity is half the problem," he said.

As Damien pointed on my blog, there must be synergy between the technologies we think will aid the developing world. This BBC article reminds us that local knowledge not worldly wisdom is key to ensuring that we ensure our efforts assist in generating that synergy, and not push unwelcome or distracting solutions on countries who know all too well the challenges that they face.