Common Paradox Tech Blog

Tomorrow, the United Nations will be announcing a special Social Media Envoy group that will use the power of social media over the next year to raise awareness for malaria control in African countries.

The special envoy is made up of well-known figures from both the social web and broadcast media, including Mashable’s own Pete Cashmore. Those that have joined the group have pledged to take one “social” action — such as a tweet or a Facebook post — every month for the next year starting from World Malaria Day on April 25, which last year saw Malaria No More also use Twitter for the cause.

The hope is that the tweets, posts and other social actions will inspire and motivate social media audiences in support of malaria control. The UN’s goal is to provide all endemic African countries with malaria control interventions by the end of 2010, working towards the aim of near-zero deaths from malaria by 2015.

We’re very happy to see the UN enlist the power of social media in the fight against Malaria. The disease kills one million people each year with over 90% of the world’s malaria deaths occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa. Universal bed net coverage is the UN’s chosen prevention tool to fight the diseases; it has delivered over 192 million insecticidal mosquito nets since 2007, covering nearly 400 million people.

However, there is more money to be raised and more work to be done. We hope that the social media envoy will go even farther than their commitment to one social action per month, because Malaria is a battle where every little bit helps.

The 2010 Social Media Envoys

* Derrick Ashong, Musician, Social Activist & Oprah Radio host

* Veronica Belmont, Host of “Tekzilla” and “Qore” and Internet Personality

* Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, New Jersey

* Sarah Brown, of MillionMums.org and wife of Gordon Brown, the UK Prime Minister

* Pete Cashmore, CEO and founder of Mashable

* Anderson Cooper, CNN Anchor of “Anderson Cooper 360″

* Dennis Crowley, Co-founder of Foursquare

* Anil Dash, Director of Expert Labs and Partner at Activate

* Justine Ezarik, “iJustine”, Internet Personality

* Jack Gray, CNN Producer/Writer for “Anderson Cooper 360″

* Arianna Huffington, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post; www.twitter.com/ariannahuff

* Guy Kawasaki, Co-founder of Alltop.com

* Larry King, CNN Host of “Larry King Live”

* Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic

* Alyssa Milano, Actress

* Dave Morin, Former Facebook executive- responsible for Facebook Connect and Platform

* Jeff Pulver, Founder of 140 Characters Conference (#140conf) and Co-founder of VoIP (Vonage)

* Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg

* Chris Sacca, Founder of Lowercase Capital

* Ryan Seacrest, Founder, Ryan Seacrest Productions

* Biz Stone, Co-founder of Twitter

* Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco

* Jon Wheatley, Co-founder of DailyBooth.com

* Randi Zuckerberg, Director of Marketing, Facebook

You can show your support for the UN’s cause by following these “Social Media Envoys” and find out more about the United Nations Special Envoy for Malaria at its dedicated site.

Tags: facebook, malaria, social good, social media, social news, twitter, United Nations, world malaria day

Here’s a good catch by CNN from this White House video that provides a behind-the-scenes look at the Obama administration’s cabinet meetings.

While it appears almost the entire cabinet uses BlackBerry as their smartphone of choice (I think I see one Razr in the pile … really?), all devices are to be left at the door before meetings begin.

As you can see, the relatively low-tech way of keeping track of which phone belongs to which statesman is fairly amusing. It also appears that United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice needs no less than three BlackBerry devices to remain connected.

Here’s a big screen capture:

Tags: blackberry, Mobile 2.0, smartphones, whitehouse

andy1307 passes on this from the NY Times: “The United States has begun talks with Russia and a United Nations arms control committee about strengthening Internet security and limiting military use of cyberspace. American and Russian officials have different interpretations of the talks so far, but the mere fact that the United States is participating represents a significant policy shift after years of rejecting Russia’s overtures. Officials familiar with the talks said the Obama administration realized that more nations were developing cyberweapons and that a new approach was needed to blunt an international arms race … While the Russians have continued to focus on treaties that may restrict weapons development, the United States is hoping to use the talks to increase international cooperation in opposing Internet crime. Strengthening defenses against Internet criminals would also strengthen defenses against any military-directed cyberattacks, the United States maintains.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes with an update to the CRU email leak story we’ve been following for the past two weeks. The peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature has published an article saying the emails do not demonstrate any sort of “scientific conspiracy,” and that the journal doesn’t intend to investigate earlier papers from CRU researchers without “substantive reasons for concern.” The article notes, “Whatever the e-mail authors may have said to one another in (supposed) privacy, however, what matters is how they acted. And the fact is that, in the end, neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers.” Reader lacaprup points out related news that a global warming skeptic plans to sue NASA under the Freedom of Information Act for failing to deliver climate data and correspondence of their own, which he thinks will be “highly damaging.” Meanwhile, a United Nations panel will be conducting its own investigation of the CRU emails.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a series of hacked emails and documents that were recently posted on Wikileaks are causing quite a stir in the scientific community. All told, more than 1,000 emails and 2,000 documents were stolen from the Climate Research Unit in East Anglia University in the U.K. “The emails include discussions of apparent efforts to make sure that reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that monitors climate science, include their own views and exclude others. In addition, emails show that climate scientists declined to make their data available to scientists whose views they disagreed with. [] Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics’ research was unwelcome: We ‘will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!’ Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The International Telecommunication Union, a branch of the UN, has decided on a standard for phone chargers that should finally cut down on a huge chunk of unnecessary e-waste. It’s about time.

It looks like the Universal Charging Solution (UCS) has some pretty broad support, from handset manufacturers like LG, Motorola and Samsung to carriers including AT&T and T-Mobile. No word on whether the standard will match the one the GSM Association has been working on, but they’re both rallying around MicroUSB, so we’ll call it likely for now.

What’s sad to me is that, according to the source, this standard could save 51,000 tons of waste if it were in place today. Considering all phone chargers do exactly the same thing, it’s pretty ridiculous there wasn’t a standard in place before.

Participating carriers and handset makers should fully adopt the UCS by 2012. Hopefully America hops on board before then. [Reuters via Electronista]

andylim writes “Plans for a universal mobile phone charger have been approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations body. The charger has a micro-USB port at the connecting end, using technology similar to what is commonly used with digital cameras. It is not compulsory for manufacturers to adopt the new chargers, but the ITU says that some have already signed up to it. ‘We are planning to launch the universal charger internationally during the first half of 2010,’ Aldo Liguori, spokesperson for Sony Ericsson told the BBC.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

reporter writes “According to a startling report just covered by the New York Times, ’senior staff members of the United Nations nuclear agency have concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran has acquired sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable atom bomb.’ In 2007, American intelligence erroneously concluded that Tehran in 2003 stopped further research into designing a nuclear bomb. This conclusion was contradicted by German, French, and Israeli intelligence. Recently, London also concluded that the American assessment is incorrect. So, here we are. The Iranians have the knowledge to build a nuclear bomb and have been working relentlessly to perfect its design. Tehran is apparently able to create the components (e.g. enriched uranium) that can be assembled into such a weapon. Meanwhile, Jerusalem is communicating with the Kremlin about a list of Russian scientists it believes are assisting Iran’s efforts to develop the bomb.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.