On the Meedan Radar – August 2012

- Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard publishes Summer Report all about social media, verification and truth: http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/issue/100072/Summer-2012.aspx It’s all excellent, but highlights relevant to Checkdesk are:

• Craig Silverman: A New Age for Truth
• Mark Little: Finding the Wisdom in the Crowd
• David Turner: Inside the BBC’s Verification Hub
• Phil Brinkman: The Story that Rocked the Clock

Also worth reading is Patrick Meier’s summary/review: http://irevolution.net/2012/07/26/truth-and-social-media/

- IREX launches new center for collaborative technologies: http://www.irex.org/news/irex-launches-new-center-collaborative-technologies

“IREX is very pleased to announce the launch of its new Center for Collaborative Technologies (CCT) to better serve our beneficiaries by enhancing our existing skill set in our seven focus areas of media, civil society, education, conflict resolution, youth, gender, and technology.”

- British Library partner with Qatar Foundation to support project to digitise archives on Gulf History, make them available to the public: http://pressandpolicy.bl.uk/Press-Releases/Transforming-our-understanding-of-Middle-Eastern-history-The-British-Library-and-Qatar-Foundation-unveil-project-to-digitise-half-a-million-pages-of-archive-material-5b8.aspx

The £8.7 million project was announced this morning at the British Library’s flagship building in St Pancras, London. Its plans will digitise more than 500,000 pages from the archives of the East India Company and India Office, in addition to 25,000 pages of medieval Arabic manuscripts – all of which will be made freely available online for the first time.

- Egypt’s Youm7 newspaper reports Microsoft engaging 3 Egyptian universities on a collaborative translation project to improve access to Arabic content on the web: http://www1.youm7.com/News.asp?NewsID=744342&SecID=24 [AR]

- More from IREX, working on an exciting academic partnerships project:  IREX Pairs US and Iraqi Universities to Advance Teaching in Iraq http://www.irex.org/news/irex-pairs-us-and-iraqi-universities-advance-teaching-iraq

- Meedan enters Africa News Innovation Challenge with Checkdesk partnership with Al-Masry Al-Youm: http://africannewschallenge.tumblr.com/post/26896085998/checkdesk-a-digital-newsroom-where-journalists-and

- Open-source startup Meteor raises $11.2 mil in funding: http://ostatic.com/blog/open-source-startup-meteor-gets-11-2-million-led-by-andreessen-horowitz

- Pro-Publica secures $1.9 million funding from Knight: http://www.knightfoundation.org/press-room/press-release/propublica-expand-news-applications-work-knight-fo/

Bedtime Reading

• Check out the Guardian’s impressive Twitter dashboard for the Olympics.
• DevSeed explain their vision of post-CMS development.
• Blogpost by one of the Guardian’s heads of engagement: Publishing process and opportunities for community collaboration
• Ushahidi on how they diversified revenues by formalising services setup.