the(new)mediaslut

Chipzilla (a.k.a. Intel Microelectronics, a company that has been doing Nano Electronics and really needs a name-change) has gone PR 2.0 and conducted a regional launch of a super-secret embargoed, hush-hush something secret using an Akamai-based web conferencing platform.

Smartbrain loves the ability to “go” to a conference in his pyjamas and eat messy Pistachio nuts while the presentation is going on. Plus, he saves on the 100 km commute to the CBD (central business district) from his home too.

It was not perfect, with four or five blips in the video / audio stream over the half hour presentation and the framerate was so slow as to make the first Intel Extreme Graphics integrated graphics seem almost half-decent. Not a major problem except from the fact that most of the captions were missed, blurred out or otherwise unreadable.

90 percent of the wholesome goodness of a real-world press conference with one percent of the effort. Good one, Intel.

Smartbrain likes PR 2.0.

Smartbrain has not broken any condition of the embargo on the super secret something as no details of that super secret something has been leaked.

This Al Jazeera clip shows why staying silent may not be the best option at all.

In this clip about the plight of Singaporeans affected by the rising cost of almost everything, Al Jazeera reported that “the ministry in charge of public assistance scheme chose not to be interviewed for this peice”  in about the 1min 40sec mark.

This was followed with coverage of opposition activist, Chee Soon Juan.

This blogger wondered why the ministry didn’t take the opportunity to highlight some of the schemes available to help the poor in Singapore.

The interview with a single mother only receiving SGD30 from her MP doesn’t help with the messaging either.

To clarify, this post isn’t pro-government or pro-opposition, but to highlight that non-participation of a serious interview like this can generate perception that could have an adverse perception by its people.

Also in the age of Internet2.0, a clip for broadcast may end up embed into political and oppostion websites that could use this to their advantage.

The biggest story from Democrat nomination to hit the front pages of the papers came from a 61 year-old “citizen journalist” by the name of Mayhill Fowler.

Matthew Ingram, technology writer for The Globe, described her “as lightning rod for critics of the practice, after not one but two somewhat embarrassing scoops from the U.S. campaign trail, the first of which involved Barack Obama and the second of which — just last week — involved former president Bill Clinton”.

Wrote the LA Times,

The latest incident cemented Fowler’s place as the unlikely face of the new-media revolution that is remaking presidential campaigns. Online videos can dominate the evening news. Or an unpublished novelist “with absolutely no journalism training” can alter the national debate.

The Columbia Journalism Review asked if Mayhill had “any reservations about publishing the piece” and her reply highlights a point why citizen journalists face the same issues as a journalist would.

Mayhill replied,

Oh, yes. I had already told my East Coast editor Amanda Michel that there was more on the tape besides what I wrote immediately after, online. I told her there might be one more piece about what Obama had to say about Pennsylvania, and that it was pretty damning. We had a long conversation and she was talking about how if you’re really going to be a journalist, you have to be willing to report on what you see, what you hear, regardless of your political opinions. Already ‘Off the Bus’ had too many bloggers who are pro-Obama and therefore present everything from an Obama slant. And I thought about that for a while and at some point I realized on Monday that she was right. And on Tuesday, the piece was just in my head suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about it but the entire piece was suddenly there and at that moment I knew I was going to do it, and I had a sense of peace about it.