MC Systems in association with Tax Administration Jamaica is putting on a Payroll conference on December 1, 2011 to go over the new year end tax procedures. The admission for the event is an affordable $1000. This event is geared towards anyone who would like to be updated on the new year end procedures as well as those who have questions for the Tax Administration Department. Please RSVP using the contact details in the flier above. There is also a Linked In event so you can share it with your colleagues : http://linkd.in/u91t32

If you attend, please leave feedback on this post afterwards. Thanks.

http://www.marcandangel.com/2010/11/15/12-dozen-places-to-self-educate-yourself-online/

It features 12 dozen places to educate yourself online. Personally I am a fine of MIT’s Open Courseware, but the link lists several other sources covering:

• Science and health
• Business and money
• History and world culture
• Law
• Computer science and engineering
• Mathematics
• English and communication
• Foreign and sign languages
• Plus More

Hope you enjoy!

This is pretty cool because now you can see how your contacts are connected. But how else can data visualisation help us?

Location:

I have been trying to track keywords and events based on location via social media tools for a long time. The issue with social sites like Twitter is that people don’t set their location correctly. For instance if a Twitter user enters Jamaica as their location then it assumes Jamaica, New York, USA, not the country. Also people use other terms like jamdown, jamrock, or just cities like Kingston or Montego Bay. When trying to find tweets from a specific area even if the person matches the keywords the location may be off.

So I first considered creating a list of Jamaican twitter users, however how will this be updated (migration etc.)? Then I thought of tracking interactions and then flagging users as Jamaican, but once again that would require alot of human interaction. Ideally I want something automated and dynamic. InMaps gave me a potential answer. Track interactions between users and then group them into subsets just like InMaps. Couple that with a metrics system, where a user with properly filled out Location or listed under multiple twitter lists with specific keywords or Klout has a higher metric than others. When users are associated with other users with higher metrics it helps to create focal points for the network.

Online communities are associated by content, relation (friends, family, groups, alumni) or location. By establishing the link between individuals online we can create a dynamic social mapping tool more accurate than what currently exists, even more accurate than what the user them-self knows. This would allow analysis of keywords by social-location-grouping or possibly by profession, education, and more.

What are your views?

LIKE many others, I have been following with considerable interest the reminiscences of Leslie Galbraith in fellow columnist Mark Wignall’s Sunday space about the part he and others played in the development of electronic sound reproduction in Jamaica.

As we are aware, the sound system is an outgrowth of radio, which, in its early incarnation, used vacuum tubes to snatch modulated magnetic radiation from the ether and convert it into a form the human ear can detect.

Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/A-sound-pioneer-s-resonating-chords_8469303#ixzz1FvD8d81B

Foursquare Swarm Badge

At 8:44pm I felt like I had caught my unicorn when I unlocked the Swarm Badge on Foursquare. This is the most prized badge I have and am proud to now have it since I started promoting Foursquare use in Jamaica months ago. This is not the first event I have been to where I expected to unlock the badge. Originally I expected it to be unlocked at Monster, a party at Chilitos Mexican, however even though over 50 foursquare users attended, they were not all checked in at the same time. The Fiction Lounge also tried to unlock it at one of their events, with no success.

So without further adieu, congratulations to Jamaica Pegasus for hosting the first Foursquare flashmob in Jamaica. Keep on innovating!

Parris Lyew-Ayee (centre at podium) Managing Director of Mona GeoInformatics Institute (MGI)

Yesterday I attended the launch of Jampro’s (Jamaica Promotions Corporation) Interactive Investment Map. Jampro is in charge of ensuring sustainable development arising from foreign direct investment into Jamaica. Without a doubt this new tool has helped them leap forward by providing factual information in an easy to use interface for the world.

The Investment Map is an online tool built atop the Google map platform that conveniently provides pictorial views and data on key infrastructure, investment projects, lands for development and natural resources. You can try it out by clicking here: http://projects.monagis.com/jampro_test/

Dr. Parris Lyew-Ayee with the Mona Geoinformatics Institute developed the map for Jampro using data from government departments. The map makes it easy to find key investment opportunities in Jamaica. The map was developed at a cost of approximately two million Jamaican dollars, and praise was given to open source tools, which helped to keep the development cost low.

Dmitri Dawkins asking about open access to the data

The first thing that came to mind was the possible 3rd party uses of this data. I asked about the access to this data for everyone, fortunately Claude Duncan, VP of Investment Promotion at JAMPRO, took the time out to address the question and said the data would be available to everyone. Currently they (Jampro) are considering ways to enable people to access the data for this map, outside of the map itself. This is good news for Jamaica’s budding software development industry, access to the data will allow them to create more tools that benefit the local economy making this a truly multi-faceted investment.

(From Left) Parris Lyew-Ayee, Claude Duncan, Myself and Kelroy Brown discussing the investment map

One guest at the function questioned who would be in charge of updating the data, Jampro with additional funding hopes to ensure the data is updated as necessary, including new data from the upcoming census. They also noted that some data is dated based on the source such as the last census (2000). Hopefully in the future with geo-location services like Foursquare gaining popularity in Jamaica, we can integrate social communication to update statistics in this map (venue names etc.).

Overall I like the push of this new tool, I think it will be very useful and I applaud Jampro for using available technology to promote Jamaica. Special thanks to Mark Thompson for inviting me and providing photos from the event. For more photos please see below:

The aim of the project is is to promote content about Jamaica or created by Jamaicans. We will also sometimes share information helpful to the blogging community.

Currently the project is only on Twitter (@jamaicanblogger) however we also plan to launch a website soon. The @JamaicanBlogger handle currently re-tweets content posted under the #Jamaicanblogger hashtag. There is also a daily newspaper that aggregates links from the hashtag automatically: http://paper.li/tag/jamaicanblogger it has a history of previous editions as well.

Nicky from Cinnamon Coffee one of the project primaries, who originally came up with the hashtag, has also created the two logos below which we will be using to promote the project:

What would really help is feedback on the logo and what you would like to see from the project. Please comment below or contact us on twitter @JamaicanBlogger or email jamaicanblogger@dmitridawkins.com with feedback, suggestions and ideas you may have. Thanks.

Tweet

This is a photo story of my father’s 1958 BMW R50:
Boy meets girl, gets married, buys motorcycle. Rides it for 60,000 miles and has accident when wife is pregnant with 3rd child. (me) Wife orders motorcycle to be taken off road until all her children are grown and on their own. One day when bike is moved to a different storage location, son sits on bike and dreams of being a Jedi Master like his father. Couple grows old together and bike is not ridden for 40 years. Husband is now a grandfather of 7 and married for 50 years, when he dies of a stroke at age 71.
Son looks over the old rotting machine and finds note attached to it from his father to him. Son decides to restore the old 1958 BMW R-50 as a tribute to his father. With the help of many friends, especially Peter Nettesheim, world renowned BMW collector, bike is restored to look even better than it did when it was built in Germany.
Watch it at 720p in full screen for best quality.

Tweet

I am not much of a fashion person myself, but on Tuesday I realised the importance of this event since we could use a common hashtag to track the influence of this event on Twitter and across the web. By Wednesday I had already messaged the Jamaica Observer to have them encourage all participants of Fashion’s Night Out to use the #FNOJa in their promotional tweets. I also encouraged friends to use the hashtag and shared it via several twitter accounts. Soon most Fashion’s Night Out related tweets were using the hashtag. I must say thanks to The Jamaica Observer for realising the need to track the hashtag and promoting it so well.

@jamaicaobserver Can everyone please use the #fnoja hashtag so we can establish Jamaican users vs. rest of the world? Thanksless than a minute ago via TweetDeckDmitri Dawkins
utenjm

So what did we learn from this? There were 1683 tweets about #FNOJa from 416 unique authors. 130 web links were shared in those 1683 tweets from 24 distinct domains. You can see more below:

#fnoja twitter stats

416 unique authors may not seem like alot, but those 416 authors had a potential impact of 152,000 views. Additionally this hashtag was specific to Jamaica, most of those 152,000 views were Jamaican. Additionally these views are better than any flier, because it is buzz, people talking to people about the event, creating greater online presence and awareness directly.

Using Hashtags is an awesome tool to help promote a cause, brand, or for tracking. Hashtags organise data to make it usable and easily found. I personally use hashtags to keep up on news on specific topics such as the #JamaicanBlogger hashtag that Jamaicans use when they release a new blog post, content from that hashtag is also retweeted by @JamaicanBlogger. Tweets using the #Jamaica Hashtag are also aggregated daily for an online newspaper using a platform called Paper.li (Thanks @brukins).

On September 10 we made our mark on Twitter with a truly local hashtag, let’s continue to use them as we organise and comment on more things using social media, to let Jamaica’s presence be known worldwide!

Tweet

The Jamaica Pegasus has done it again! They have staged the second successful Tweetup in Jamaica. A tweetup is a social event for twitter users to meet, mingle and socialise in person. The Pegasus first hosted a tweetup on June 18, 2010, it was the first event of it’s kind in Jamaica and was a huge success. Jamaican twitter users all over were talking about the event for months, wait, correction we are still talking about the event. When the second event was announced it took only 8 hours to fill the 250 person cap for the event, the previous event took 3 weeks (only 150 people). In total over 300 people actually attended.

Was it better than the last one? Definitely! The food was good, and Capt. Collin Hinds kept the music juggling. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, people were actually dancing on the dance floor. One thing to note was that people were actually socialising, in person, and not just tweeting away on their phones. Marcia Forbes, twitter’s Jamaican media queen, prepared a survey for attendees to fill out on twitter usage and demographics, I can’t wait to see the results in her upcoming book. Mrs. Prudence Simpson, head tweeter for @JamaicaPegasus was also out and about greeting everyone. Corve Dacosta recently interviewed Mrs. Simpson for his The Last Word series on his blog, take a read. A tonne of prizes were also being given away, my friends @persephone101, @byrumjr and @wabamonsta were all winners, as well as @sweetpersona who always seems to win something as well. There were several other winners as well for prizes like a weekend for two at Secrets Resorts, which is another twitter-friendly hotel.

I was glad to meet with a lot of tweeples (twitter people) at the event, the list is big so I won’t call names, but thank you all! Due to the larger venue I don’t think people mingled quite as much as the last one, but it was absolutely necessary given the volume of people. After the event a group of us ended up going to the 24/7 Cafe on premises to enjoy some Bailey’s Milkshakes and Sandwiches. We didn’t end up leaving The Pegasus until after 2 AM! My only disappointment in the night was that nobody jumped in the kiddies pool, I was betting on that next time I guess? I would like to thank The Jamaica Pegasus for organising a great event, I had a great time! Please see some photos below:

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