The technologies that came to the fore in Haiti are not new. They include everyday technologies -- mobile phones, online mapping tools, GPS, and social networking. What is new is their use in the humanitarian context at the scale seen in the global response to Haiti's catastrophic quake.

Public diplomacy (PD) -- which the State Department defines as "engaging, informing, and influencing key international audiences" -- is not rocket science. All too many academic theories about PD are incomprehensible, pompously-expressed "concepts"...

The French have an expression for it: Il a manqué une belle occasion de se taire – "He (or, in this case, she) missed a good opportunity of staying silent." The saying was brought to mind by the affair of the British ambassador's blog...

...Initiatives in Education, Science and Culture Towards Enhanced US-Muslim Countries Collaborations aimed to focus on concrete projects and initiatives in those three areas, and not on divisive political issues such the Israeli-Palestine conflict and Iraq.

UN Messenger of Peace HRH Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein...today launched a video, in collaboration with the United Nations, inviting people from around the world, particularly youth, to tell leaders what the anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) mean to them by uploading short films on the UN YouTube channel.

A significant aspect of this engagement strategy has been to use new media and public diplomacy to express more effectively what America is and why it is carrying out the policies that it does. One outgrowth of this is the State Department's "Conversations with America" series.

A unique website dedicated to the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage's participation at the Assilah Festival showcases a spectrum of its wide programme of arts, culture, heritage and conservation initiatives and projects at the Assilah Art Festival, on the Atlantic coast of the North Eastern tip of Morocco, this July 10-27, 2010

In the post-Soviet period, the social networks within Russia’s Muslim community have become increasingly intense and diverse, reflecting both broader social and political changes and efforts by various groups within Islam to unite believers for one or another purpose, according to an analysis posted on the Islamnews.ru portal.