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Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing software company, has unveiled four new mobile solutions for governments that it says will help better connect them with their constituents. Starting today, federal, state, and local agencies can take advantage of Rapid Response 311, Mobile Communities for Government, the Government Social Command Center, and Platform Mobile Services for Government. Saying that governments are facing the same technology shifts as the private sector, Salesforce believes that there’s a customer revolution taking place where citizens are using social media to air their grievances, so governments need to be paying better attention. The company believes that government agencies may be falling behind the curve if they’re not paying attention to social conversations. With the introduction of its mobile offerings, Salesforce thinks agencies will be better equipped to handle citizen feedback. Mobile technology is important for governments because when citizens have complaints, they’re not going to wait until they get home to share it on the Internet — they will instead take out their smartphone and upload a photo or compose a Tweet or status update. According to the research group IDC, nearly 90 percent of all smart connected devices shipped in 2012 were mobile. By being mobile-enabled, governments can not only communicate with citizens, but also collaborate with its partners, accelerate projects, and show the world that it is transparent and open to receiving feedback. Rapid Response 311 Similar to mobile civic engagement service CitySourced, Salesforce’s Rapid Response 311 is a mobile app that governments can offer for citizens to submit problems they would like fixed in their neighborhood. Citizen users would find an issue, say a pothole, and in the app, input details about the problem and where it’s located. A photo could also be attached to the ticket request. Once done, the user would submit it to the appropriate agency. Other options in the app include being able to check a request status, or access the city’s knowledge bank. Once received, within Salesforce, a government agent will view details about the request and can find information related to resolving the problem. A telephony component is integrated giving agents the power to call the submission user for more information. Government Social Command Center With Rapid Response 311, governments are able to support individual requests. However, using Salesforce’s Social Command Center, the company says agencies are able to be more proactive in monitoring what their constituents are saying about the city or town and about the government and find ways to fix the problem. Salesforce says that this command center is not a room filled with computers and people monitoring activity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Rather, with its mobile offering, governments can have agents working around town and checking in right from their phone or tablet device to monitor sentiment and opinions relating to rising issues, impacts of policy, how government services are being received, and more. Mobile Communities for Government Leveraging Salesforce Communities, which was unveiled earlier this month, the company is enabling governments to create dedicated spaces for not only their internal teams, but also for citizens and partners to congregate and discuss issues. Salesforce believes that this will help accelerate collaboration and get things done — no longer will meetings be delayed due to scheduling or lack of information. Platform Mobile Services for Government The last of its mobile offerings, Salesforce is bringing Force.com and Heroku to the public sector to help produce mobile apps that it hopes will expedite development so it doesn’t take years to complete a project. The company thinks that with the state of the economy and tightened budgets, agencies are looking to have employees work away from the o

GSF India-backed Biosense Technologies has launched a iOS urine testing app called uChek. Available in India and the United States, the company claims that uChek can be used to test for 25 different medical conditions including diabetes, kidney, liver and bladder problems, pre-eclampsia and hypertension, and urinary tract infections. Users can install the app on their iPhone and read the urine dipsticks with the urine sample using a peripheral called ‘Cuboid’ and color mat. The company says that urine dip sticks begins reacting within 60-120 seconds of dipping them in an urine sample. These sticks should then be read at a specific time after the reaction begins using the app, cuboid and color mat. The reaction for each condition is different as per the instructions given by the urine dip stick manufacturer. The test results can be stored locally on  phone, graphically analysed, or the app also allows users to mail the results. The company claims that the results are never stored on its server. Since the data can be stored on the phone, no network or data connectivity is required to retrieve or access the data at any point. The website states that uChek is a medical device and can be used only for external testing as advised by a healthcare professional. Speaking to Medianama, Myshkin Ingawale, Director of Biosense said that this disclaimer is more in compliance with U.S laws to avoid self-medication and that anybody with a smartphone can use this app on their own. The iOS app is compatible with iPhone 4, 4S and 5 and is available in India for free. The company plans to introduce their android app in July this year. Since the accuracy of the test depends on the quality of the camera in the phone, the company is hesitant about introducing the app in feature phones, adds Ingawale. However, to use the app, one needs to purchase the uCheck kit which is available for Rs 1,999 in India and $40 in the US. The kit includes the cuboid and the mat, while the urine dip sticks which are available at different price ranges need to be purchased separately. Ingawale also said that the kit is reusable & comes with one year guarantee and that only the dip sticks needs replacing. He adds that uCheck’s trial with the IIT Bombay lab has ended and now it is conducting a 3 month trial with Hyderabad based LV Prasad Eye Institute. In March 2013, Biosense Technologies had raised $500,o00 funding from GSF India and Insitor Fund to improve the infrastructure around both its products. Our take: Similar to the way glucometers have changed the way blood sugar levels are monitored by individuals, uChek app can change the way urine testing happens with options to test for multiple health conditions and parameters. However, the cost of the kit can still be a matter of concern to people at the bottom of the pyramid, although their long term cost is lesser than glucometers. The personal usage of the app is limited to people who can afford high end smartphones. Although, it would still be useful in hospitals especially in the developing countries considering the poor healthcare infrastructure that is available. The accessibility of this app is likely to further increase with their android app. However, since the accuracy of the app depends on the phone’s camera, the app might not give accurate results in all the phones. Similar initiatives: While we are not familiar of any Indian company offering a similar solution, Denmark-based LineHQ offers a similar iOS app called Piddle. Strangely though, even Piddle doesn’t seem to be available for download from the iTunes store, at the time of writing this article.

Here's a story that the New York Times has yet to carry. A petition, signed by 23 leading US academics, authors and film-makers, has been launched which urges the paper's "public editor" to examine the Times's inconsistent coverage of two Latin American countries.They argue that there are disparities between its largely negative reporting on Venezuela during the presidency of Hugo Chávez (who died in March) and its less critical reporting on Honduras under its successive leaders, Roberto Micheletti and Porfirio Lobo.Among the petition's signatories are more than a dozen experts on Latin America and the media plus Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman, and the film directors Oliver Stone and Michael Moore. Here's the full script of the petition… Dear Margaret Sullivan,In a recent column, you observed:Although individual words and phrases may not amount to very much in the great flow produced each day, language matters. When news organisations accept the government's way of speaking, they seem to accept the government's way of thinking. In The Times, these decisions carry even more weight.In light of this comment we encourage you to compare the New York Times's characterisation of the leadership of the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and that of Roberto Micheletti and Porfirio Lobo in Honduras.In the past four years, the Times has referred to Chávez as an "autocrat," "despot," "authoritarian ruler" and a "caudillo" in its news coverage. When opinion pieces are included, the Times has published at least 15 separate articles employing such language, depicting Chávez as a "dictator" or "strongman." Over the same period - since the June 28 2009 military overthrow of elected president Manuel Zelaya of Honduras - Times contributors have never used such terms to describe Micheletti, who presided over the coup regime after Zelaya's removal, or Porfirio Lobo, who succeeded him. Instead, the paper has variously described them in its news coverage as "interim," "de facto," and "new."Porfirio Lobo assumed the presidency after winning an election held under Micheletti's coup government. The elections were marked by repression and censorship, and international monitors, like the Carter Centre, boycotted them. Since the coup, Honduras's military and police have routinely killed civilians.Over the past 14 years, Venezuela has had 16 elections or referenda deemed free and fair by leading international authorities. Jimmy Carter praised Venezuela's elections, among the 92 the Carter Centre has monitored, as having "a very wonderful voting system." He concluded that "the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world." While some human rights groups have criticised the Chávez government, Venezuela has had no pattern of state security forces murdering civilians, as is the case in Honduras.Whatever one thinks of the democratic credentials of Chávez's presidency - and we recognise that reasonable people can disagree about it - there is nothing in the record, when compared with that of his Honduran counterparts, to warrant the discrepancies in the Times's coverage of the two governments.We urge you to examine this disparity in coverage and language use, particularly as it may appear to your readers to track all too closely the US government's positions regarding the Honduran government (which it supports) and the Venezuelan government (which it opposes) - precisely the syndrome you describe and warn against in your column.Yours sincerely...To see all 23 of the early signatories, and to sign the petition, go hereSources: NYTimes eXaminer/North American Congress on Latin AmericaNew York TimesVenezuelaHondurasAmericasUnited StatesHugo ChávezNoam ChomskyMichael MooreOliver StoneJimmy CarterHuman rightsCensorshipRoy Greensladeguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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Rando only launched in March but the anti-social photo-sharing app that deliberately eschews the standard social network clutter of likes and comments and connections – simply letting users share random photos with random strangers and get random snaps in return — has blasted past five million photo shares after a little over two months in the wild. It is now averaging around 200,000 shares per day, says its creator ustwo. For half that time Rando was iOS only, with its Android app not launching til April. Platform spread aside, the huge point here is that Rando has ditched all the self-congratulatory, endorphin-boosting hooks that apparently keep people tethered to their social networks. Yet managed to grow regardless. As Rando’s tagline pithily put it: ‘You have no friends’. The photos you share here will never be liked, never be favourited, and if they are shared outside Rando to other social networks, a feature Rando most definitely does not enable within its app, you likely won’t ever know anything about it. It’s a very rare digital social blackhole — but one that’s proving surprisingly popular (and all without any embedded social shares to grow virally), even while it’s refreshingly ego-free. Rando has been downloaded almost 230,000 times since its March 10 launch, with nearly 35,000 downloads in the past seven days, according to data shared with TechCrunch by ustwo‘s Matt Miller (aka Mills). The platform breakdown is pretty even right now — with only slightly more iOS app downloads than Android (roughly 120,000 vs 107,000), showing how Android users are adopting Rando even faster than their iPhone owning counterparts, having had a month less to send strangers strange shots. There are, of course, many more Android owners than iPhone owners out there so there’s a lot more scope for growth on Google’s platform. Rando’s top five countries by downloads are as follows: South Korea  82,224 downloads 37% of total downloads United States  41,120 downloads 19% of total downloads Russia  25,553 downloads 12% of total downloads UK  12,173 downloads 6% of total downloads Brazil  7,795 downloads 4% Even though Rando does not enable social sharing within its app, users can take screengrabs and share shots manually — and that’s happening a little. ustwo notes there have been more than 25,000 #rando Instagram shares, for instance, despite the app not giving users any simple path to do that. Searching for #rando on Twitter also typically brings up a handful of organic daily shares. The single piece of contextual information that Rando does allow its users to retain — the general location where a photo was taken — is also removed by close to a fifth of users (17%). While less than 1% of shared images have been marked as inappropriate so you can’t accuse Rando’s growth of being fuelled by sexting. You could perhaps argue it’s a bit of a curiosity that’s appealing to a small minority of people, even while most folk find it baffling. ustwo’s data shows that the app’s most active users (top 10% in terms of uploaded randos) have uploaded more than half (57%) of all the shared randos. But the app retention rate (50% in the past week) does sound strong. Specifically that means half of Rando’s users logged in within that week, which isn’t bad as an active user type stat. A little bird tells me that ustwo, the London-based studio which decided to find out what would happen when it made an anti-social photo-sharing app, is preparing to push Rando onto a third mobile platform in the not too distant future too — so expect Rando’s growth trajectory to continue stepping upwards, as it has been since launch. ustwo says one million randos are being shared every four to five days now, at current usage rates. ”You are literally looking at the next $1billion Yahoo! Acquisition,

Two things make a good magazine – presentation and content. Many magazine will be good at one or the other, the best combine the two elements. Perdiz is one such magazine. Its second issue has just landed, promising further proof that ‘Happiness is Contagious’. The issue will be easily recognisable to anyone who picked up the launch issue late last year. The same format is repeated, which is sound as it’s a strong one. Loose-stitched open binding (actually improved from issue 1) and a kaleidoscopic foil block title take good advantage of print and the bold use of colour is bright and appropriately happy. It looks and feels good. Like many current independents, Perdiz is a magazine about people. It uses its basic theme – happiness – as an excuse to examine how different people live, and divides the content into long and short forms in an intelligent and well-paced manner. Despite being bilingual (it’s published from Barcelona in English and Spanish) it doesn’t feel cramped. Longer pieces don’t overstay their welcome and vary between being text-orientated and image-led (such as that above and below, about one man’s love of the sea and fishing). The longer material is split up with pictorial spreads such as this collage of rainbow-based books covers by Kent Rogowski (above). Plus there are briefer pieces of good news and a nicely put together illustrated list of ‘10 Things I changed to Improve My Life’ (above), with advice around managing email and travelling long haul. There’s also a paeon to good grammar, well-illustrated by Raquel Gonzalez (above) that is a brave subject to deal with in two langauges at once. I can’t judge the Spanish but the English avoids mistakes. Looking at these images, they don’t do full justice to the issue. Perdiz is a well-made and characterful magazine that hangs together as a whole – these pages are even stronger bound together. Highly recommended. (read my review of issue 1 here) Perdiz #2 is currently available from the magCulture shop.

The wait is out! Google has just released the 27th version of its Chrome browser for Windows, Linux and Mac users. True to the legacy of the previous updates, the latest version also comes with slight improvements including an average of 5% faster page loading time. According to Google, the speed enhancement owes to the [...]

Infographics and Statistics in Website Design

In the first part of our interaction with Ekalavya Bhattacharya, he spoke about how digital is changing their content strategy, the relationship between TV & digital and the challenges with doing shows that are digital only. In the second part of our interaction, he speaks about the mistakes from season 1 of Drive with MTV that they would like to avoid, mobile strategy, their audience and monetization strategy. Mistakes Medianama: What were some of the mistakes in social with TV from your last season that you want to avoid this time? Bhattacharya: There are some funny incidents from the first season that we want to avoid. For instance, one team lost their car keys on a national bandh, which we hadn’t anticipated. So this time, we want to plan for these production related mistakes. Besides this, we didn’t really make many mistakes last season. That being said, we are making the show more audience centric this season with VJ (video jockey) involvement and more TV episodes, among others. Mobile Strategy Medianama: What role does mobile phone play for the consumption of such a show? How do you think it makes sense to leverage the medium? Bhattacharya: How are four guys travelling in Nano going to communicate with people outside?  It can happen only with a mobile phone. Contestants check stuff and tweet on the go using their mobile phones. Also, 25% of the video traffic for the show came through mobile device during the last season. We speak content not medium so you can consume our content through any device. Mobile is in the DNA but we are not alienating it separately for the show. Audience Medianama: What kind of data do you collect on audiences online? Bhattacharya: We have got the data points but we are still learning everyday on how to use this data. Are we manipulating content consumption based on this data? I would say not yet. For instance, in the last season, we noticed that the team from the south was associated with food joints. We could’ve branded Team South as ‘Foodies’ and contact a MDH or Usha for brand sponsorship. Medianama: How do you measure the success of a program on social media? Bhattacharya: Likes, tweets, stickiness, conversations, repeat viewers, views, are a few indicators, however I would say that the perception change is the biggest thing. These indicators would be help in our decision to do Season 3. Medianama: Do you push online audiences more towards TV or do you push TV audiences online? How is the interplay between TV and online? What have you observed? Bhattacharya: Its 50-50 now. If you see on MTV on television, content is mainly Hindi music targeting the Hindi speaking audience. On the web, its the English speaking audience that we target. So we are pushing both ways. There’s no fixed formula. We have done prediction apps based on TV shows. Most shows have dedicated Twitter hashtags to tap the entire audience. However, I will disagree that there are two separate audiences for TV and web, since Roadies is a big example where TV viewers also consumed web content. Medianama: How do you see people consuming a reality show online? What are the devices on which you see maximum response? Bhattacharya: While watching a video, it is going to be a computer and when it comes to viewing photos its going to be mobile or a tablet. We are also integrating Instagram and Pinterest to the show this year. If the teams have a heart (like) on their Instagram photo, then they will get a point. We are hoping that consumption will happen across media and devices because we want to be a device agnostic show. Monetization Medianama: How different is your digital audience from your television audience? How has this affected your monetization strategy? Bhattacharya: A web show which has TV outreach helps us monetize the web show better. But I can’t really give you a fixed answer. When you look at web, you also look at content not just ads. When you go into branded content, the br