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Interview: Spin Different
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From:
"Daniel D'Esposito" <danieldesposito@huridocs.org>
Subject:
Interview: Spin Different
Date:
2008-03-06 10:46
(cross-posted from Human Rights Tools newsletter - sorry if you received
this twice)
Dear readers,
This is the second of two newsletters on the same topic: how information
technology can be used to increase the accountability of leaders and
representatives.
Like UN Democracy profiled in the last newsletter, Spin Different was put
together by a volunteer on a shoestring budget: Sam Smith. Another example
of what amazing things can be done when ingenuity and a strong volunteer
spirit are combined.
http://www.spindifferent.com
We contacted Sam and also asked him for an interview. If you like democracy,
web technology, or just a really good interview with a great person, then
you will enjoy it:
Editors: How is this website meant to be used? What kind of information does
it provide?
Sam: Spin Different lets you compare the words of the "official" spokesmen
for the US Whitehouse, the UN and the UK Prime Minister, on any topic you
choose.
http://www.spindifferent.com/
You can then see how for some issues, the UN Secretary General is talking
about them long before the US or UK start talking about them:
http://spindifferent.com/results/?as_q=Myanmar
http://spindifferent.com/results/?as_q=Burma
We sometimes (like there) fall over the differences of international
terminology, but there are some issues which hit the headlines irregularly,
but the UN talks about day in, day
out:
http://spindifferent.com/results/?as_q=Darfur
You can also see how some of the subtleties that Downing Street tries to put
out just disappears in the domestic press (I'm based in the UK so don't get
US TV).
The next thing to add is linking that into iQuango.org/news to get the NGO
point of view.
http://www.iquango.org/news
Editors: How is it done, technically? How do you keep it up to date?
Sam: SpinDifferent is a really small site standing on the shoulders of 3
others - it just pulls in the content from The UN Says, The White House
Says, and Dowing Street Says (DowningStreetSays being the original which was
setup in 2004 by a group of mySociety
people). Each of the 3 works the same way, but that's where any little bit
of magic happens.
http://www.theunsays.com
http://www.thewhitehousesays.com
http://www.downingstreetsays.com
Each site has a small computer program (it's printable onto a side of A4)
which watches for new briefings to appear (say on the PM website at
http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page746.asp). They all follow some pattern, so
we can easily pull out the headings and responses, put it all in a database,
and give each one a
web page, make it commentable (think of each one as a blog post).
Since we have everything in the database, we can then easily put RSS and
Email Alerts on top - so Americans can find out when the Press Secretary
talks about their topics of
interest - be it cheese, iguanas, or Iran.
Editors: Who is behind this? Tell us a bit about the people who developed
this website. What kind of financing did you have?
Sam: Some friends may have paid for a cup of tea while we were talking about
it, but I'm not sure that's the kind of financing you meant. This is all
volunteer work - there's no money here at all.
For what happens when you put money and serious time into this, see
theyWorkForYou.com or www.mySociety.org
http://www.theyworkforyou.com
http://www.mysociety.org
Editors: What is your next project? If you had a million dollars to spend on
a nonprofit idea, what would that be?
Sam: A million dollars, these days, is about 40 million tea bags, which
should get some talented or thoughtful volunteers interested and caffinated,
somewhere. When that's the case, and they're all talking to each other,
anything is possible. Although there's a USD to GBP exchange rate in that
calculation, so it might be closer to 40 tea bags by the time you read this,
but even that can get you a large amount done.
iQuango.org is the latest project that's up and running - what happens when
someone does the SpinDifferent thing for all NGOs? Put the NGO news in a big
pot and start stirring. It's in need of more news feeds adding, but does
have the option to create custom RSS/email alerts for both the IMF and
WorldBank announcements (out of the big 3, the WTO is the only one which
doesn't publish enough info to make that possible).
You can then start feeding that stuff into other things, building on it to
do more.
It'd be nice if someone is interested in data and visualisation of it in
novel ways for the mySociety visualisation tool meinedata to have stuff
added to it (Mellanrummet or Mptables.com for what it does - the ugly bits
are my level of design skill, rather than any necessary limitations of the
system).
http://www.iquango.org/mellanrummet/
http://www.mptables.com/
Editors: What are your favorite blogs, websites?
Sam: despair.com is accurate, xkcd.com is funny, ted.com is utterly
inspirational, and the www.bbc.co.uk world service and radio 4 podcasts are
informative, and some of the ideas ave been lifted straight from offhand
comments from various BBC output.
http://despair.com
http://xkcd.com
http://ted.com
http://www.bbc.co.uk
As an example, TheWhitehouseSays.com was built in a few hours after a
comment about the differences between the US and UK media at Bush/Blair
press conference.
Ok, thanks a lot for the interview, Sam! Please keep us informed of your
next creative projects – we are sure there will be many!
For our readers, if you have questions, Sam can be contacted at S@msmith.net.
Also visit his blog: http://www.disruptiveproactivity.com
As usual, please forward this to your friends and colleagues who share your
interest in human rights, or post it to your blog and mailing lists.
If you have received this from a friend and would like to subscribe, you can
do so here:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/newsletter.htm
To send us feedback, just use editors@humanrightstools.org
Best regards, and good luck in your efforts to defend or raise awareness
about human rights.
Daniel D'Esposito, Editor
Human Rights Tools
editors@humanrightstools.org
http://www.humanrightstools.org
PS: because you read this down to the very end, we have a little reward for
you: this fantastic Iranian Ministry of Intelligence public information
video, found by The Arabist blogger. Enjoy and share, its simply hilarious!
http://arabist.net/archives/2008/02/25/dial-113-for-mukhabarat
More from our bloggers: http://www.humanrightstools.org/bloggers.htm
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