Date: March 5th, 2008

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.

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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