Cybersurf

Over much of this weekend, I spent a lot of time watching SKY, CNN and BBC while at the same time monitoring half a dozen web sites that were closely following the final hours of the Pope.

It did not take me long to work out, however, that all the major news organisations were sourcing their information from one or two Italian news agencies. The Italians clearly had an inside track on this one – and Italian translators must have been charging a fortune this weekend.

It was quite interesting to watch how quickly news web sites from all over the world quickly translated and repeated whatever their Italian counterparts were carrying.

And as I was busy updating the SABCnews.com feature page on the Pope, I thought that the best source of information would be to go to the Italian directly.

The Vatican web site at www.vatican.va was totally overloaded and became for all practical purposes unusable, however, the Italian news agency ANSA- which you will find by typing A.N.S.A dot I.T – was cooking all through the night and did not appear to have any difficulty in coping.

Another valuable source of information about the Pope and Vatican affairs in general is zenit.org – it describes itself as a Catholic news agency and offers news in six languages – but the Italian section is more up-to-date than the other.

Now if you are interested in finding news web sites in other countries, here is a tip from Charles Webster – who as a PR consultant – is often very interested in contacting news organisations in other countries.

IN: The Mondo Times. . . . (http://www.mondotimes.com/)

OUT: . . . . nice for my client.

Charles Webster is a PR consultant who makes extensive use of the internet. Next week, he is going to share with us some of his trade secrets – telling us how as a consultant for a multi-national company, he manages to service clients all over the world.

And so we wrap up today’s edition of Cybersurf. If you are looking for any of the addresses mentioned in the program – please go to cybersurf.blogspot.com where you will find the script to today’s program. That address once again – cybersurf.blogspot.com

Thanks for listening and remember – to keeeep on surfing.

// posted by Steven Lang @ 11:08 pm