Future:Media:Change

The hope and promise of technology to improve governance was on display at last week’s Personal Democracy Forum 2010. So too were the technologies created to make those hopes a reality. Some were not yet in beta, others had been in use for over a year; some had official presentations, others were mentioned as asides. Here is a rundown of the applications that were discussed.

Location based social network Foursquare counted their 40 millionth checkin according to a tweet from one of their developers.

A city awash with arms and with a homicide rate higher than most of the world’s conflict zones, Rio de Janeiro is suffering from a culture of fear. Affecting everyone. Filmmakers are aiming to tell stories that make a difference.

So when I posted about the great Have a Break video Greenpeace had produced on Wednesday I didn’t foresee how Nestlé would manage to fail on such an epic scale on their social media management.

MobileActive.org have released a great new How to Guide to mobile security for citizen journalists who risk their own security to report on events in oppressive regimes.

5 Billion pieces of content were shared on Facebook per week during February, according to data released by the company. This is up big from 2 billion per week only five months ago in September 2009. Sharing tool, AddtoAny reports twice as much content shared on Facebook than E-mail by their users.

No need for a TV to follow today’s marathon health care summit as video sites across the web featured Obama’s conversation with Republicans and Democrats. From the White House Live, to YouTube, to Ustream and LiveStream, each site offered their own tools for viewer participation.