Cybersurf

Hello and welcome to Cybersurf, your weekly update on what’s happening on the internet – I am your Cyberhost, Steven Lang.

Now, if you have been paying attention to AM Live this morning, you will be aware that there are a number of important conferences taking place in various parts of the world. And it is now common practice to link such conferences to dedicated web sites. In fact it is very useful to use the web site to share information from the conference with those who, for various reasons, cannot attend in person.

It is also a great way of sharing such information with the general public – it is fundamentally part of the publicity machine.

Let us start with the UN General Assembly meeting in New York. Last night, President Mbeki, was one of several international leaders to address the opening meeting of the 61^st session of the General Assembly. You could have heard it here – live – on SAfm or watched it on TV – but, if you missed the president’s or anybody else’s speech you can still watch it on the UN web site.

You need to download a Real player in order to be able see the video clips, but if you happen to work at a large corporation, the network firewall might block your access, but normally it is quite easy to either view archived video clips, or later in the day, you can watch the session live.

Besides the video clips, the UN dot org web site has immense resources for anyone interested in following proceedings of the General Assembly session.

Another current international meeting that offers webcasts, is the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA has begun its fiftieth Anniversary year at a meeting at the Agency’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

The “Atoms for Peace” agency is highlighting a photographic exhibition entitled “Make power, not war”

In my view the www.iaea.org/ site is superb – quick easy navigation on a very intuitive framework – yet at the same time it does have quite sophisticated multi-media options.

The live webcasts use the Windows Media player which automatically sets up and begins broadcasting much quicker than the Real player on the UN site.

Staying with international meetings we go to Singapore where the the World Bank and the IMF are holding their Annual meetings. You can find the dedicated site by either going through the IMF site at imf dot org or go directly to singapore2006.org.

Not surprisingly, the site punts the tourism opportunities in Singapore, but also gives plenty of useful information about the meetings. Unusually, the site also offers regular podcasts and RSS feeds. Never heard of a conference site with those features.

After seeing the great international conference sites, I was disappointed not to find any dedicated site for the COSATU conference. While COSATU does have a substantial website, there appears to be almost no information about the congress that is taking place in Midrand. Perhaps they have other priorities.

With that we draw to the end of this edition of Cybersurf – but before we leave – just in case you missed any of the addresses I mentioned in the last three minutes – never fear, I will put the entire script, including web site addresses on the Cybersurf blog.

Now here you have to pay attention – write this down – Cybersurf.blogspot.com – one more time – Cybersurf dot blogspot dot com.

Please join me again next Wednesday for more on the best of the web.