Rights groups and activists slam Iraq Internet law
by Prashant Rao Note: This article was published by AFP on July 12, 2012. It can be found in full here. BAGHDAD (AFP) – An Iraqi draft law that would jail web users for life for a variety of ill-defined crimes has been condemned by rights groups and activists who have slammed its vague language [...]
How is the new MacBook’s Retina display? It depends
I recently purchased (and today took delivery of) a new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. I’m staying with my parents in Hong Kong, and as soon as my Dad walked through the door, he said he wanted to see the retina display which is, frankly, spectacular. Unfortunately, lots of software has yet to be upgraded [...]
Baghdad Diary: Tech frustrations in Iraq
Prashant’s Note: This blog post was originally published by AFP on November 26, 2009. It can be found in full here. by Prashant Rao I love technology — I regularly read tech-related blogs, usually buy New Scientist, What Hi-Fi or similar magazines when I travel, and have spent more than I’d care to admit on [...]
Facebook on the Frontline (Part II)
Prashant’s note: The following article was originally published in the latest issue of Correspondent, the bi-monthly magazine of the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club. It is reproduced here in full with the permission of the magazine. by Prashant Rao How is social media changing the role of today’s correspondent? All I know is that for [...]
Building up a Tumblr
Matthew Keys made some interesting points in a live chat on Poynter about the use of Tumblr. He made some useful suggestions about how to get started, and what individuals and news organisations are using Tumblr well (Poynter’s Joe Grimm also offered up this list of 60 innovative Tumblr accounts). It’s worth checking out the [...]
What is Tumblr? (Part III) – The Poynter Live Chat Edition
Past readers will recall my initial post trying to get to grips with Tumblr led me to a web presentation, which was compiled by Matthew Keys. Well, that same Matthew Keys is taking part in a Live Chat hosted by Poynter on the subject, “How to use Tumblr to build your brand as a journalist”. [...]
What is Tumblr? (Part II)
There’s a really neat (and detailed) summary of what Tumblr is, how it works, and how to get started on Journalism.co.uk for those of you who are interested. The post’s author also makes a few good recommendations at the end about what to do with your Tumblr when you do eventually start using it: Go [...]
Some good news for iPad users
The New York Post reported this week that Condé Nast was going to begin offering iPad subscriptions for its magazines, which is fantastic news for this particular customer. I am a subscriber to The New Yorker‘s digital edition (which massively lets down its fantastic writing) and a past subscriber to Vanity Fair, so I’m looking [...]
If you read one thing today…
Make it AFP London photographer Leon Neal‘s two-part post (so two things, I guess) on his preparation for photographing the Royal Wedding on April 29, and actually taking and filing pictures on the day.
What is Tumblr?
One of the reasons I started this little project is to better understand web trends and technologies, either by forcing myself to use them (WordPress), or by learning enough that I could write about them — this feeling has been exacerbated by Portal 2 having been released and my not having known anything about it. [...]
The rise of the iPhone 4 camera (and fall of my G10)
The good folks at TechCrunch have pointed out something pretty incredible: Camera upload data over at Flickr indicates that the iPhone 4 is about to overtake the Nikon D90 to become the most popular “camera” in terms of photos being uploaded to Flickr, and usage of point-and-shoot cameras is falling through the floor. If you [...]
A random thought, with a touch of Bollywood
I recently returned to Baghdad from a holiday visiting friends and relatives in Asia, and during the course of that trip, I visited my brother and his family in Singapore. While in Singapore, I spent most of my time playing with my 16-month-old nephew, who is walking and has an expanding vocabulary that is, for [...]
AFP Journalists on Twitter
UPDATE: I’ve actually moved this post into a page (unimportant why, but easier to organise for me) which can be found here. LAST UPDATED: April 18, 2011 More and more AFP journalists are on Twitter, to the point where a simple old #FollowFriday is difficult, so I’ve set about compiling a list with as full [...]
Reading Material
In a bid to better get to grips with photography and videojournalism, I’ve added a few “multimedia” (for lack of a better word) blogs to my Google Reader. I’ll add them to my blogroll soon, when I actually create one. But in the meantime, the full (fairly institutional, and very brief) list is: The New [...]
AFP CEO pushes multimedia (WSJ)
The Wall Street Journal has just published an interview with AFP chief executive Emmanuel Hoog. The agency is on a real multimedia push (like the videoclip training I’m doing tomorrow), details of which he gives in his answers. (Hat tip to Kabir Chibber)
Internet collaboration still in infancy: Wikipedia founder
by Prashant Rao Note: This article was originally published by AFP on November 2, 2008. It can be found here. LONDON (AFP) – The age of public collaboration over the Internet is still only in its infancy, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told AFP in an interview. The 42-year-old web guru, in an effort to show Wikipedia’s [...]
Why?
As a first post, I thought I would quickly summarise why I’m doing this. I’m a (relatively) young journalist working for “old media” — the organisation I work for is trying to adapt to the changing media landscape, and I’m attempting to do the same by learning how to take half-decent photographs, perhaps some video, [...]