New Media

The Mediacom Studio is alive

26/04/2008 By christina 7 Comments

I am pleased to announce that the Communication Studies Unit is now equipped with a multimedia studio which I have set up with (a lot of) help from Avinash. The studio has been baptised Mediacom Studio and even has a website which we have launched yesterday at www.mediacomstudio.com

The facility has been created thanks to funding from the UNESCO-IPDC which approved my project last year. Avinash has been the mastermind behind the technical setup and has spent a lot of time selecting and fine-tuning our equipment list. We had a lot of constraints such as limited availability of certain items and also the dollar exchange rate which shrunk our budget. But, we managed to have a nice setup nevertheless with:

– Apple iMacs complete with the iLife and iWork suites
– Panasonic HD camcorders with tripods and a lighting kit
– Olympus audio recorders with tie-clip microphones
– Philips LCD TV, DVD player and an Apple TV
– a gigabit local network

The idea is to provide more hands-on practical training to our Communication and Journalism students, to give them the opportunity to come up with professional products and showcase them on the website.

ICTA and Facebook

16/11/2007 By christina 11 Comments

So, after the Facebook – ICTA controversy, Trilock Dwarka, Chairman of the Authority, has admitted that the decision to block access to Facebook completely on Thursday 8th Nov (a black day for the Mauritian online democratic community) was excessive in an interview with L’Express on Tuesday 13th. But, he was shrewd enough to lay the blame completely on his director, Krishna Oolun. One can only wait for the latter’s reaction to confront the two versions. Is this the latest manifestation of the ‘Chairman vs. Director’ pandemic that seems to affect most of our parastatal bodies these days (look at Enterprise Mauritius, NPCC, IBA, MBC, etc.)?

However this did not prevent the guy from trying to find some justifications to the decision by evoking problems such as frauds, cyber-bullying and minors being at risk (Is the PM a minor, BTW, who needs so much protection?). The typical discourse of people who want to control what we read, see and hear… They say they want to protect us, but they are caught more often protecting themselves or their interests or those who can promote/demote them (their temporary Gods on earth)!

Anyway, isn’t it funny that the guy says there is a need to have a position paper on social networking? Bet you he did not even know what this means a few months ago. And, for god’s sake, will they have position papers on every new platform that gets created on the Internet (and the pace is accelerating; who, in Mauritius, knew about Facebook two years back?). So, let’s have a position paper on Hi5, MySpace, Orkut, every single blog and forum, e-mails, chats, newsgroups, YouTube, Yahoo, Flickr, Google, Amazon, and what not. At least, it would keep them busy… Provided they don’t end up with a silly campaign like the NCB anti-spam campaign (which did not have spam companies like RKCommunications out of business).

BTW, with Avinash, we were reflecting on how emblematic it is that those organisations get called Authority (IBA, ICTA) carrying this connotation of central control (whereas new media and Internet are the exact opposite). In France, the equivalent of the Independent Broadcasting Authority is the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA) and the equivalent of ICTA is the Commission Nationale Informatique et Liberté (CNIL)… Would the CNIL do a similar (dis)service to Chirac, Sarkozy et tutti quanti? Yes, this is disservice as the response from the Mauritian Facebook Community is more violent than the initial parodic pages of the PM. Just type the name of Navin Rangoolam in the search field of Facebook and you will see what I mean. The groan is growing day by day… Aster la li pu vine vraiment vilain!

And finally, on telecommunications costs: how much time will they continue to take us for fools? When it comes to applying new reductions in tariffs, it takes a month or so to be able to do that for administrative reasons: it takes time to adjust and deploy the new tariffs (aren’t they computerised in this so-called cyber island?). But when it comes to raising prices, all operators are suddenly very efficient at deploying the new tariffs over a single day at times.

This is paradise island…

Joel de Rosnay

12/11/2007 By christina 2 Comments

French futurologist and scientist Joël de Rosnay gave a conference last week at UOM on ‘Nouvelles Technologies, Innovations et Résistances au Changement’. He drew a well organised map and catalogue of the crucial areas of innovation and listed the many stumbling blocks that need to be overcome in order to make the most of these new technologies with special reference to Mauritius (with which he has some family ties BTW).

He identified the main areas as being those of infotechnologies (basically Internet 2.0, what he calls ‘technologies de la relation’), biotechnologies (research in genetics), nanotechnologies and ecotechnologies (solar energies). I was particularly interested in listening to his talk about new information technologies as I have read one of his books ‘La Révolte du pronetariat’ which I bought last year and also use in my class for ‘New Forms of Media’. Joël de Rosnay’s enthusiasm about the Internet revolution, what he calls the ‘media of the masses’ (in opposition to ‘mass media’) is unabated and he even came up with a funny equation when it comes to the new business model i.c.w. the technologies of relation which runs as follows:

FLUX + BUZZ = BIZZ

Meaning (from what I have understood) that businesses need to attract people (by providing information-rich services for free) to create flux and those people will themselves attract other people through recommendations thus creating buzz and the business will be there.

His intense presentation cited, inter alia, the Long Tail, the idea of collective intelligence, new management styles (systemic as opposed to hierarchical). More interestingly, he also criticised the way the Cyber island initiative has turned out (in his words more a technopark where big companies pay big money to rent a locale), his initial vision being more that of a technological pole with incubators, public exhibition and meeting places to learn about technological developments. Yet, he still seems optimistic as he mapped out some ideas about the use of technology for tourism purposes (e.g. info on mobiles for guided tours, WiMax everywhere).

His presentation was so packed that it is not possible to summarise all the ideas he evoked, which were all enthusiastically received by a small audience composed of well-known entrepreneurs, academics and a few students. One can only wonder how much of his advice will have been understood and implemented… But, it’s refreshing to hear people who are on the same wavelength from time to time. Lifts your spirits up temporarily until you hear about the Facebook faux-pas of the ICTA, that is!

Local media on the web

23/10/2007 By christina 4 Comments

There have been a few developments lately in the local mediascape related to the web (at last!) that are worthy of attention. Starting with the Défi Media Group which has launched its website for the first time at the following address: http://www.defimedia.info
<img
This was long overdue as oddly enough, none of the print media titles it owns (Le Défi Plus, L’Hebdo, News on Sunday, etc.) had a website up to now. However, I really appreciate that the group has decided to frogleap directly into the web 2.0 world as its website does not merely display articles which have appeared in the print version. It is a platform that allows for rating of articles, comments from readers, social bookmarking as well as user-generated content in a blog section, RSS and even Radio Plus podcasts (which I haven’t yet tested though). So one can say that the Défi Media Group is the first major local media player to exploit Internet 2.0!

Another media player which has also decided to spend some effort on its website is Radio One at http://www.r1.mu

Though the website is richer in information compared with the previous one, I personally think it is still unsatisfactory. It still looks very much like a first generation website with no user comments, no RSS, no user-generated content, etc. And I can’t seem to be able to listen to the podcasts (Microsoft plug-ins?). And the readability is not fantastic as the design is not very neat and clear (compared with that of the Défi website for instance).

Ironically, whereas Le Défi does not seem to have widely publicised its own initiative (which would deserve much more public attention), Radio One has been actively promoting its website through print and radio ads.

Incidentally, I want to put a special mention for an overseas initiative by Anne Robert, a Mauritian expat in Canada who was head of the Radio One station for some time. Her website Global Mauritian provides an interesting platform for incisive opinion articles with reader comments enabled.

Note about my blog:
Since I felt a bit bored by the look of my blog lately, I’ve decided to change its theme as you may have noticed. Not too happy about this one either, but well, we’ll see when I have more time to tinker with it…

The Cyber Island project

12/10/2007 By christina 4 Comments

In my last post, I invited my readers to fill in a survey about ICT, Society and Poverty in Mauritius for a paper I had to present at a conference on Poverty and Development which took place on the 1st and 2nd October at Bell Village. I am here posting the slides I used for my presentation as well as some results of the online survey which attracted some 40 respondents (thanks to all). Though the results cannot be deemed to be statistically representative, they are nonetheless interesting as they provide some preliminary insights into the preceptions vis-à-vis what I call ‘The Cyber Island project’.

So here are the slides: ICT, Society and Poverty. The Vision of Mauritius as a Cyber Island from a Development Perspective

And key findings from the survey:

All expressed conviction that ICT are important to society

Most (84%) felt ICT can help Mauritius achieve social progress

59% firmly believed such technologies can effectively help alleviate poverty

Above 60% (67%) of respondents expressed moderate to serious doubts about the ‘cyber island’ project

Regarding progress achieved towards realising the project, 54% felt not much has been achieved so far

In essence, it seems that current Internet users agree that ICT are an important feature of modern societies and, as such, the use thereof should be promoted in order to impact positively on social inclusion and development. Yet, they also feel that the grand ‘cyber island’ rhetoric is overstretched as there is a gap between the discourse and the practice.

In other words, that Dissemination is too slow.

DRM, Newspapers and Web 2.0

07/02/2007 By christina Leave a Comment

Been gleaning the web and came across three interesting things today that I’d like to share here:

Jobs on DRM
The first one is a posting by Steve Jobs on the Apple website concerning DRM, in which he argues that DRM does not really serve any purpose cos only a small fraction (3%) of music being played on proprietary players like its own IPod is actually DRM-protected. In any case, all CDs sold by the majors are DRM-free. So, says Jobs, we could actually do without it.

The future of newspapers
The second is an interesting discussion about the future of newspapers on LinkedIn.

and the cherry on the ice cake:
The Machine is Us/ing Us
a nice video about web 2.0 by a Micheal Wesch, a professor in Anthropology.

Enjoy!