Many people now understand the role of personal hygiene in maintaining good health. Until the 19th Century this was not the case everywhere and life expectancy was considerably shorter due to contagious disease, plagues, contaminated food and water, etc.
While viruses and plagues continue to exist in real life, a similar situation arose in cyberspace in the form of malicious software.
The explosive growth in the adoption of electronic devices by the general population (computers in various forms, smartphones and tablets) is creating and environment where some measures of digital hygiene (such as maintaining strong passwords, carrying out backups, not becoming a victim to phishing, etc.) are needed to protect the devices and the data they contain as well as their owners.

Ed Gelbstein, in his last book published with Bookboon, describes in simple, non technical language a collection of good practices that can be considered as sensible good…

Dr. Jane Goodall: “The forests of DRC are of supreme importance in fight to slow down climate change & protect rich diversity of flora/fauna. Eastern DRC provides crucial habitat for chimpanzees & gorillas, both endangered.”

Follow @marcoRecorder

I was recently added to World Leader Twitter & Web Directory a project managed by Barclay Browne which I consider both ambitious and very useful for people working in social media and communication.

Pls Welcome: @marcorecorder@EC_MatildaBlog@EUSpokesAlex@US_transcom “World Leader Twitter & Web Directory” (V32) http://t.co/hk5Ay4xDM9

— World Leader Accts (@VITweeple) September 17, 2013

As we can see from the about page of their blog:

One essential element to the Electronic Diplomatic Dialogue, is being sure of “Who is Whom” among electronic accounts purporting to be those of governments and government officials. Hence, I assembled The “World Leader Twitter and Web Directory,” and have made it freely and publicly available with the simple goal of facilitating clear dialogue via Twitter both among government and elected officials and between world leaders and their constituents.

Now, I managed to get in touch with Barclay Browne, the man behind the…

By now, most of us are pretty used to seeing Twitter as a powerful tool for real-time discussion around global events — discussion that in some cases includes the actors involved in those events, such as the historic back-and-forth between the Israeli army and the Palestinian group Hamas earlier this year. But even though that seems almost routine now, it’s still impressive to see how far-reaching Twitter can be, and how it lets the “sources go direct.”

In one of the most recent examples, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and U.S. president Barack Obama exchanged pleasantries on Twitter both before and after a historic telephone call — then on Tuesday, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey followed up with his own discussion with Rouhani about Twitter access and freedom of speech in that country.

In October 2011, I gave a speech to Beirut Online Collaborative. Here’s an extract with ideas on digital diplomacy….
 
1. Know your followers: Of mine, I judge 25% to want to know more about life of Ambassador (what’s it like to have bodyguards? Do we really eat nothing but Ferrero Rocher?), 25% to be UK political junkies, 25% to be Lebanon political junkies, and the rest to be a mixture of the informed, interested, eccentric, curious and hostile. The Lebanese proportion is increasing so I’m tweeting more about Lebanon.

2. But don’t be defined by your followers. We need to reach out, without falling into trap of courting popularity. We’re not comedians, journalists or politicians, and we should not pretend to be. A high number of followers is a good sign you’re getting through, but is not an end in itself.

3. Be authentic. People can see the real…

Last week I joined TEDx at LAU. It was a remarkable event, bringing together many of Lebanon’s realistic dreamers, pioneers and creators. Defying the anxiety and uncertainty about, it gave me renewed hope in Beirutopia. 

Lebanon is the frontline for coexistence. If we cannot live together here, we will fail to live together in Madrid, Paris and London. If we cannot better manage the Middle East’s transition towards security, justice and opportunity, we will face a generation of upheaval. In the end, politics will prevail. The job of diplomats is to help it do so without decades of bloodshed.

When I arrived in Lebanon two years ago, I was a social media virgin. I went through a phase of information harvesting. Then a phase of excited engagement and connection. I’m still doing both, probably too much of both. But what I now believe is more exciting is mobilisation.

And that’s…

There is something quite new about social media, and it is not that it’s providing on a huge scale (of hundreds of millions) volunteer contributors of “content” that in weird and wonderful ways deliver huge sums (of billions) to those lucky entrepreneurs whose projects made it big. Well, OK, it is partly that. But if that is how we are looking at the #socmed phenomenon, we give evidence of something between severe myopeia and locked-in syndrome.

Twitter faces a double problem here. First, because of the tendency to group “social media” together (Pinterest and Twitter have about as much in common as the Stock Exchange and a town hall meeting – oh yes, people, large public rooms, engagement). From one angle it is one of the Big Four, with Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. But that is the least interesting angle.

Second, because the world of media…