At a seminar — The Arab Spring, meaning causes and implications — Navdeep Suri, joint secretary, Public Diplomacy of the Ministry of External Affairs encouraged Indian Embassies in various countries to join Facebook and other social networking sites.

Launched a bit over a year ago, more or less coinciding with the eruption of the Arab Spring, the ministry’s Arabic Facebook page on Thursday reached the milestone of 100,000 fans. The fact that so many people have said they “Like” the page, however, does not mean that all of them really do.

"I tell all our ambassadors, remember, you only have one mouth but you have two ears, so use this as a way not just of communicating with the citizens of the country where you are serving, but also understanding the point of view of people who may not be sitting at a mahogany table inside the embassy," says Alec Ross, the State Department's senior adviser on innovation.

Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, members of the resistance movement inside Syria were able to have a secure conversation last week with a small group of foreign-policy mavens in Washington, D.C. What they told us boils down to this: A revolution is under way.

Type in the Mandarin words for “invest” and “Canada” into the popular search engine Baidu, and an official Canadian government website doesn’t appear until the 25th link. Lack of easy access to information in Mandarin about investment, education and immigration in Canada is weakening our relationship with China.

For all the American fascination with Asia, for all the media focus and the political emphasis on its rising powers, most of us still don't really understand how its societies work, how they're different from us and from one another. As long as we're willing to believe rumors like this one and spread them so widely, there's going to be a lot more that's lost in translation.

Today, government and private sector leaders gathered at the White House to highlight progress in answering President Obama’s call to use science, technology and innovation to promote global development.