A daily reading of the blogosphere this week has provided a feast of new year predictions, wish lists and tips for 2009 that reveal some really interesting online and tech innovations that could have a great impact on the non-profit and development arenas in the year ahead.

The big story of course has been the ongoing conflict in Gaza; but this too has seen quick-thinking people adapt new technologies for communication and data-building to track the conflict and help build information for use by humanitarian relief agencies.

Mainstream news channel Al Jazeera English are utilising a platform first developed during the post-election violence in Kenya in early 2008 to track events in Gaza. Ushahidi – meaning “testimony” in Swahili – uses “crowd-sourced” information to map crisis situations. It allows anyone to submit information via sms, email, or through the web (Al Jazeera is utilising a Twitter feed). OpenStreetMap (OSM) –aimed at creating a free, editable map of the world – diverted their energies to a special Gaza project early in the week. They are looking for people familiar with street names and landmarks to enhance the limited existing map. Reuters Alertnet has a list of other mapping initiatives.

Elsewhere, the BBC reported on a growing E-library project providing ICT literacy and awareness to schoolchildren in Nepal, allowing pupils to “conquer their fear of computers”. The initiative uses the open-source Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP), which allows many people to simultaneously use the same central computer on a Linux operating system and hopes to reach children in all 75 provinces of the country.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) started the year by announcing big staff cuts and a “refocused mission” (via Ethan Zuckerman) that nevertheless prompted a healthy discussion on where this initiative should move next.

A pre-Christmas story in Wired, “The cellphone that could change the world” on how mobile phone telephony could be used in disease detection points to what could be a big theme of 2009 – health and web technology – picked up on in ReadWriteWeb’s new year predictions.

But perhaps the clearest call to action is Antony Mayfield’s (via socialreporter):

“Here’s a New Year’s Resolution for you that might do some real good: teach someone at work or in your family how to use social media tools. Actually New Year’s Resolution is too weak a way to frame this. It’s a call to arms. A plea to your humanity.

Feeling revolutionary itch but not sure how to start scratching with a mortgage/student debts/rent to pay? This is how.

Why? Because our future’s at stake…”

At the BBC World Service Trust London office today we welcomed an excellent external speaker, on a subject of particular interest for me (and indeed this new blog). Nathalie McDermott from social enterprise start-up On Road Media spoke to staff in London about flexible, cost-effective solutions for facilitating communication between and across marginalised groups and hard-to-reach communities.

Nathalie gave numerous examples of how free software and “web 2.0” technology has enabled marginalised groups to engage and report on their own communities and culture. Free networking sites such as Ning and Facebook and content-sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr run alongside blog platforms (this blog is hosted on wordpress) that empower the kind of “citizen journalism” and individual reporting and commentary that traditional news gatekeepers have struggled to handle. She spoke of the unique opportunity of these tools to give people their own voice, generate powerful broadcast output, and reinforce and support community cohesion.

Two of Nathalie’s projects include a private social network for young gypsies and travellers Savvy Chavvy, and a knowledge-sharing network between UK and Ugandan mental health professionals, Heartsounds. She also has experience training journalists in Sudan, introducing them to free software solutions such as the open source audio editing package Audacity.

The reference to her work in Africa prompted discussion of an issue that was on many people’s minds; namely the limited and often poor quality access to the internet in many parts of the developing world, especially for rural and marginalised communities. Nathalie responded that in fact blogs and social networks many actually be the optimum online solution for communication and media delivery in developing countries as they are “lighter” than image-heavy and very large traditional news sites. She also noted the use of tools such as RSS (really simple syndication) in developing countries, meaning that users can sign up to a “feed” from their favourite websites and blogs, without the need to load up heavy homepages and search through large sites for relevant material.

The discussion opened up an exciting range of possibilities in relation to the current work of the BBC World Service Trust, in an area that is only set to grow as commercial organisations seek to engage “emerging markets” and economies – something that is already being seen in mobile telephony growth in developing countries.

A different kind of site – and a particularly good example of the use of web 2.0 for civic empowerment – is that of the mySociety model of civic engagement websites, which promote good governance and accountability among elected representatives. TheyWorkForYou and FixMyStreet are two good UK examples. There are exciting opportunities for adapting this kind of model as part of governance and accountability projects run by the BBCWST around the world, combined with support for better social affairs and political reporting.

These are issues that we are just beginning to think about at the BBC World Service Trust, but that we should continue to talk about and develop ideas on, to exploit the best of advances in internet technology and communication practices to promote development and reduce poverty.

Yet another example of the all-seeing nature of Google’s digital domination was unveiled this week with the launch of Google Flu Trends, a new application from the internet giant’s charitable arm Google.org that provides information on the spread of the infection by tracking individual Flu-related internet searches such as “aching muscles”, “headaches”, “fever” and so on.

According to data mined from their archives, a Google mapping of the past 5 years’ flu-related searches almost exactly matches the statistics of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The crucial difference being, that the digital data Google provides could be accessed, analysed and acted upon quicker than traditional methods of tracking disease and infection. According to an article in the IHT, there are 36,000 flu-related deaths in the US each year – a far higher figure than expected for this uninitiated reader, and one that underlines the fact that an ability to respond and react quicker to regional flu epidemics could potentially save lives.

Any such examples of the intersection of health and technology in innovative ways are useful to informing the BBC World Service Trust’s work. Health is a major theme of our work, and an area in which we have used innovation to get our message across. A highly successful mobile ringtone campaign to promote condom use in India this year took advantage of the rapid expansion of mobile telephony in the developing world – and has so far reached 100 million people across the country.

The next step will be to look at ways of expanding and building on knowledge of how mobile telephony can be used in health development, and to continue to innovate. For Google, this week’s announcement is apparently also just the start, of what the NY Times’ Miguel Helft refers to as “an apparently fruitful marriage of mob behaviour and medicine”, as they plan “to explore other countries, languages, and diseases in future”.

So, are the possibilities boundless? The power of the information database Google has access to is well known and documented, and researchers have often spoken of the ability of the web to help make predictions. But from a development perspective, what useful services could be provided?

It is all very well tracking Flu outbreaks in the United States, but would the same work for HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa? Many countries and regions in the developing world have little or no access to the internet due to lack of infrastructure, so along with the all important rapid response factor, the sheer body of data needed to build and make predictions such as these is not available.

However, a look at the Google Trends service itself is an interesting story in its own right. A search on HIV/AIDS reveals that the top 7 nations for traffic under “HIV/AIDS” today are African, with Uganda and Ethiopia topping out. The same search for Flu brings up a top ten list of mostly western nations including the US and Canada (still allowing for any skewed results after Google.org’s announcement). Indonesia is the only country to feature on both lists.

In the Google tradition, yesterday’s announcement was emphasised very much as an experimental project. This latest initiative is in conjunction with Google.org’s “predict and prevent” initiative focusing on the emergence and rapid response to infectious diseases.

Whatever the potential limitations, it is always good to hear of positive uses of Google’s unparalleled data access, and to keep working on building innovative tools of information technology for humanitarian and development goals.

A deliberately provocative headline in Wired magazine this week “Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, make blogs look so 2004” heralded an article arguing that the “golden age” of blogging – where ‘amateur wordsmiths’ could ‘pour their hearts out’ in cyberspace and be rewarded with high Google rankings is over. A new generation of micro-blogging tools like twitter, and alternative formats such as YouTube and Flickr have replaced the more traditional long-form text weblog, itself overtaken by blog magazines such as the Huffington Post said Paul Boutin. This being the internet, the article was quickly picked up on – and blogged – by amateur and professional hacks alike, which resulted in a surreal exchange on the BBC’s Today programme on Radio 4 this morning as presenter John Humphreys struggled with social media linguistics and asked his guests how many real friends they had.

This seems a neat reflection of the evolving nature of information exchange and flow that new technologies and online applications have made possible in the last few years. For many of us around the world daily exchanges on social media networks such as Facebook, plus access to news through TV, radio, online, print newspapers and on mobile phones is an unconscious act. We are used to consuming information in a variety of formats – often complaining that there is too much of it.

However tomorrow (24th October) on World Development Information Day (also UN day), it is worth remembering that in a media-rich world, many of the planet’s poorest still lack access to potentially life-saving information.

In a new policy briefing from the BBC World Service Trust “Left in the dark: the unmet need for information in humanitarian response” (PDF, 750MB), Imogen Wall and Lisa Robinson argue that millions of people, already suffering or at risk through manmade crisis or natural disaster, are having their problems compounded because they are denied access to basic information that could help them save or rebuild their lives.

In the aftermath of disaster – such as the 2004 tsunami, 2005 Pakistan earthquake and 2008’s Burma cyclone and Sichuan earthquake – access to vital information about what has happened, whether it is safe to travel, where the nearest hospital is, where to go to for food and medical supplies etc is hugely important and often lacking. The report calls for aid and development agencies to build-in communication plans to emergency and humanitarian response strategies. Innovation and use of new technologies are just as important in these difficult contexts to maximise the reach of information and access remote or cut-off communities.

The comment responses to the Wired piece were nearly all in disagreement with the article’s claim, loudly attesting to the health of the blogosphere. It is a young format that is here to stay it seems – another publishing platform which those who find useful will heartily defend. It is natural for us to defend access to information – today, we should also remember to advocate it for those “Left in the dark”.

Download the full report here (PDF, 750KB) and read the full story on the BBCWST site here.