Fahd from Transwikia at Meedan SF

Anas, Wasma, and I were pleased to have a visit today from Fahd Alhazmi, the founder and coder of the Transwikia project. Fahd is in the Bay Area to prepare for his Masters work in CS after having finished his undergraduate degree at King Fahd University in Saudi. For those of you who do not know about Transwikia – it is a project for enabling crowdsourced translation of Wikipedia articles. (Meedan’s WikiArabi project, which formally ran from 2010-11 but is still online, did not address the challenge of multiple contributors to a... Read The Rest →

*POSTPONED* New media and translation – public lectures by Meedan CEO Ed Bice

Note: due to recent unrest in Cairo, the House of Translation lecture and workshop series has been postponed until further notice. We will post new dates and details of the rearranged events in due course. As part of his upcoming visit to Cairo to lead the next “House of Translation” series of workshops, Meedan CEO Ed Bice will be giving two public lectures, hosted by the American University in Cairo’s Center for Translation Studies and the National Center for Translation: Social Media Translation: Real-Time Media, Network Culture and the Translator... Read The Rest →

Open Up!: How can Open Data, Civic Engagement and Technology Make Governments More Accountable?

Transparency advocates from as far afield as India, Africa and the Middle East gathered in London on Tuesday to share their experiences working on open data and civic engagement projects in some of the world’s most gruelling political environments. Attendees at the Open Up! event in London’s ‘Tech City’ spoke eloquently about their attempts to put technology to the goal of greater openness and citizen empowerment in their countries, despite what some reported as profound infrastructure constraints, government hostility and even harassment. Highlights included ‘Yemi Adamolekun‘s introduction to Enough is... Read The Rest →

Meedan 2011 Annual Report

We are delighted to present the Meedan annual report for 2011, published today on Issuu. You can view this below, download or share. The report covers Meedan’s partnerships, technology development and programmatic focus through a year of tumultuous change in the Middle East. In presenting this report, we are grateful to the brilliant design work of Meedan Designer Maya Zankoul. We hope you enjoy it. Open publication – Free publishing – More arabic Share → Tweet

Okki Dokki – Checkdesk Partner Meeting Dokki, Cairo

Once again typing away from the regular environs of the winged metallic tube – to be exact, these words come to you from seat 31A here on the Lufthansa brand transport experience, headed westward, my home direction. The past two weeks have been very good for Meedan. Most significantly and to the point of this post, we held our first partners meeting for Phase 2 of the Checkdesk project. From October 16-18, we brought the entire Meedan team (less Aaron, Andy, and Zainab it must be noted) together with an... Read The Rest →

Meedan named as finalist in Africa News Innovation Challenge, in partnership with Al-Masry Al-Youm

It’s with great excitement that Meedan can announce that we are among the finalists in the prestigious Africa News Innovation Challenge, in partnership with Al-Masry Al-Youm for Checkdesk: A digital newsroom where journalists and citizens work together. To decide our fate in the competition, we’ll be heading to TechCamp in Zanzibar to be grilled about our ideas by global leaders in the fields of technology, innovation and journalism. We’re honoured to be given the opportunity to refine our ideas both with the expert judges and with our fellow finalists, and for... Read The Rest →

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... Read The Rest →

Meedan partners with Syrian citizen news outlet Al-Ayyam

Meedan is working with the news newtork Al-Ayyam to bolster public voice, free expression and accountability in Syria. In a joint initiative that is designed to be responsive to critical and fast-changing needs on the ground, we seek to strengthen the role of citizen journalists to act together as a watchdog documenting the actions of the Syrian regime and armed groups operating in the country. Our objective is to provide a model for an investigative, citizen-led media in Syria and a building block of future reconciliation efforts. The partnership is... Read The Rest →

Google Updates Site Translation Plugin Allowing Owners and Readers to Improve Machine Translations

Google announced on Wednesday that a beta update to the site translation plugin, launched in 2009, now allows site owners and readers to “polish up” machine translation of a web page by contributing their own translation. Up til this latest update, the translation plugin only allowed users to view machine translations of a given web page with no ability to publish alternative, read: better, translations. Once a website sets up the plugin, users can choose the language they want to read the site in from over 60 possible languages. Then... Read The Rest →

Six Steps for Fact Checking Citizen Media

Anyone can be a publisher today – thanks to the web. As a result, there are so many more sources of news and information, which makes fact checking all the more critical in fast moving news stories.  When disinformation gets into the news cycle, it can lead to people being put in harm’s way.  Here, then, is a set of six tips to help you get it right. 1. Who is the original source? Every piece of news has a source – the person who told you the news.  Who... Read The Rest →

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