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The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is blogging and YouTubing.

There are some mild semantic wobbles - Meg Munn MP says in a video, "This is my first blog in this post" (is a YouTube video a blog?) but there is evidence of a real effort to engage with the medium: A Flickr photo-set, a blog-roll with real bloggers, including ones from the other side of the political fence from the government (and ) But a surprising lack of the kind of blogs () dealing with the kind of issues one would have thought relevant.

Will it work? Well the challenge for any senior politician blogging was neatly expressed by the Shadow Chancellor . When I asked him if he was planning to blog, he said words to the effect that, if he wrote anything interesting on the blog it would be all over the papers the next day, on the other hand if he avoided controversy the blog would be so dull nobody would want to read it; for that reason he was not going to blog.

So can the FCO blogs actually avoid "George's dilemma"? Well the great advantage of blogs is the ability for people to communicate directly. If Foreign Ministers and FCO staff are going to engage directly with the people their policies affect that may be of great benefit. As we discovered last night the US State Department seems to think direct engagement is the

But if blogrolls are anything to go by, the Foreign Office Bloglines account could with a bit of sprucing up. What would your suggestions be for blogs the FO should be reading?

Excellent and that blogs are playing in the reporting of the "" in Burma. News Online also lists some of the

Blogs, mobile phones and and social networking sites are proving invaluable in getting information out of the country. If you've watched TV today you've probably seen video's like this, shot by ordinary Burmese:

News Agency AFP also recognises the power of the blogs, and citizen journalists in a features piece on how news is getting out:
When Myanmar's detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi stepped outside her home in Yangon to greet marching monks and supporters on Saturday, the only pictures of the landmark moment were posted on blogs. Mizzima News, an India-based news group run by exiled dissidents, picked up one of the photos of Aung San Suu Kyi and said more than 50,000 people accessed their website that day.
We spoke to the on Drive. He told us that he fully expected the authorities to turn of net access in an effort to clamp down on communications. But even this may not completely silence the steady flow of information out of the country.

Citizen Journalists in Burma have demonstrated that the exclusion of professional reporters no longer cuts of the flow of news, (though it does guarantee that much of it is produced by people unsympathetic to the administration.)

The wealth of content is quite a change from a few years ago, when, in the wake of the Tsunami we wondered , but information was very, very hard to come by. The current situation could not be more different. Here for example is an edited version of an email I was forwarded today outlining how the 麻豆官网首页入口's User Generated Content hub is making use of web based content from Burma:

• By recording a short eye witness report on their mobile phone and then emailing us the MP3 file. This is an alternative to trying to get people on the phones - as all phone lines appear to be down.
• A number of Facebook groups have also been set up, where people are trying to share information. They are helping us by encouraging people to send the 麻豆官网首页入口 any content they have
• We have also been speaking to people who have been uploading Youtube videos

Again this is quite a cultural change. When news breaks Blogs, Social Networks and Video Sharing sites are going to become must-check sites for journalists.If you want to take a look yourself here are some links from Saffron Revolution's blog-roll:

, , , , , , ,

Also worth looking at the many covering Burma

UPDATE. The Associated Press reports that much of the net access has been shut down, "Service providers BaganNet and Myanmar Post and Telecom were shut down Friday, although big companies and embassies hooked up to the Web by satellite remained online." They quote Reporters Without Borders as saying the flow of information from Burma had "flowed to a trickle"

UPDATE II I believe the video above was filmed by a student traveling through Also worth reading this interesting piece

UPDATE III Our good friend Clark Boyd of WGBH/The World has produced an excellent

If you'd like to subscribe to the podcast, by far the easiest way to get it, click here: This week we featured:

• The controversy surrounding the legal action of - featuring Clive Summerfield, , and


• with some news about visas and thoughts on the UN's proposed expanded role in Iraq. She told is that visas were being given to Iraqi's who had worked with Americans. I've not been able to find more about this . Email me if you have more info podsandblogs@bbc.co.uk


• talks about police and prisons


• offers his thoughts


• Former spoke about his experience in jail


• Richard Barrow who helps publish www.ThaiPrisonLife.com and


• parents Barbara and Derick spoke about Shaun's life in jail in the US

Thanks to Gabor (and son) of the for the intro. We're always in the market for intros so please do send us more.

Please do subscribe to the podcast, many of your are listening, but mostly via the blog - having it appear on your mp3 player in time for the morning commute is surely the better option.
Suscribe via iTunes: MyYahoo: Googlereader

If you'd like to subscribe to the podcast, by far the easiest way to get it, click here: This week we featured:

• What can we learn from runs on banks about the much vaunted Web2.0 principle of the "wisdom of crowds" and what financial lessons should be learned from the Northern Rock "crisis"? We spoke to blogger and leading economist


• Our political correspondent John Pienaar at the Liberal Democrat conference spoke to the MP who is using Facebook to


• The father and son marathon running team who's efforts to enter the London Marathon have (thanks Parky)


• A chat about Blackwater, Noah's post quoting as is this


• Police blogger David Copperfield . We'll catch up with some of the issues, and a police blogger, next week when take our look at prisons and the criminal justice system


• The with Clairwil


• Dan Hardie and former soldier Mark Brockway take the


• Amy Mitchell of the spoke about their study of the difference between user-news sites like Digg and Del.icio.us and those where the agenda is set in the traditional way

Thanks to Gabor of the for the intro. We're always in the market for intros so please do send us more. Please do send us your ideas for our prison special too.

Please do subscribe to the podcast, many of your are listening, but mostly via the blog - having it appear on your mp3 player in time for the morning commute is surely the better option.
Suscribe via iTunes: MyYahoo: Googlereader

You can subscribe to the podcast here. Shorter than usual show notes this week. I酶m in Denmark and as you can see struggling with a different keyboard layout and limited bandwidth. On the programme we featured:

• War evaluates General Petraeus testimony before Congress on the Iraq troop surge.


• We hear from videoblogger Vaughan Smith embedded with British troops in Afghanistan..


• Britney Spears bombs at the MTV Video Music Awards and the Blogosphere goes wild. .


• And we find out what it's like at (with Podnosh, Night Passage and In Wokingham).


• All that and

Please do send in your suggestions for stories for next week, podsandblogs-at-bbc.co.uk is the email. And keep sending in intros they really add to the feel of the segment. This weeks was by Brian Greene, with music . Brian is also organising

For Monday 24th September I'd like to dedicate Pods and Blogs to prison blogging and blogging from jails. I'm inspired by this post by

There are more than 9 million people in prison worldwide - that鈥檚 a much larger population than many nations we cover. (By the way, the US is the world鈥檚 leading jailer, both in absolute terms - 2.09 million people in the prison system - and proportional terms - 0.71% of Americans are in prison. We beat out China and Russia in absolute terms, Belarus and Russia in proportional terms.)

Britain also has a growing prison population. I want your help in putting this segment together. If you know of a blog maintained by someone in prison, or by their friends and family please drop me a note. Or perhaps you are a victim of crime with strong views about prison, and the prison system, we'd be interested in hearing from you too.

We're not coming at this with any particular agenda about whether prison is a good or bad thing. But the blogs are a very powerful tool for shedding light on dark corners, peering behind bars and over barbed wire fences. Help us to visit what, following Ethan, we might call this other nation: get in touch, suggest links, drop us an email.

It's with great regret that I learned that . Brian, who had pancreatic cancer, passed away on Friday according to . There are tributes from fellow bloggers and . Brian leaves a wife and a young son.

I interviewed Brian back in June. He spoke via mobile phone from his hospital bed, and even in such depressing surroundings he managed to find some humour in his situation. But Brian was never flippant, his blog was more than just an account of illness, it was, in a gentle and unhectoring way, a meditation on life and mortality.

On Friday, I highlighted Brian's blog as part of my picks for Blogday (I'd missed the latest update in the comments). I think Brian would have relished the irony. I hope he's out there somewhere having a good laugh at my expense.

UPDATE: I've added the .

UPDATED POST: Full show notes are here, as I finally make it into work. As ever you can subscribe to the podcast here: This week we featured:

• in Al-Anbar Iraq talked to us about the military situation and President Bush's visit


• Thanks to who put us in touch with Roger Lextrait a man who lived alone on a Pacific Island for eight years


• ? We talk golf patents with a golf patent blogger and lawyer


• and come together thanks to Doctor Vee and Mr Euginides. There's


• Rohit Gupta who writes at Algomantra is an Indian artist experimenting with a super-slow method of


• The talks to us from Afghanistan. The

Thanks to Grant of the podcast for the intro, and to the musician . We're in the market for an intro for next week so please do send us more. Please do send us your ideas and stories too.

Please do subscribe to the podcast, many of your are listening, but mostly via the blog - having it appear on your mp3 player in time for the morning commute is surely the better option.
Suscribe via iTunes: MyYahoo: Googlereader

writing for Wired's Danger Room blog. His latest report is on the biometric security checks employed in Fallujah:

The idea: deny insurgents 鈥渇reedom of movement,鈥� says Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Smitherman, who heads the biometric badging program for Multi-National Forces-West, here in Al-Anbar province. 鈥淟ike Mao said, insurgents are like fish swimming in the sea of the people.鈥� These are the high-tech nets, 鈥渢o keep 鈥榚m from swimming freely.鈥�

His embed is a compelling read, check

UPDATE: of the Frontline Club's embed in Afghanistan. I've just spoken with Vaughan about the embed and his decision to . His YouTube videos highlight the intensity of fighting in the region. Visit the blog for some excellent coverage of the conflict. I post one of his YouTube videos below, which illustrates one of the logistical snafu's that make a soldier's life that bit harder. And if you think chocolate is the least of soldier's worries - remember it represents valuable calories that are, as Vaughan observes, part of a soldiers calculated intake.