In its never-ending efforts to be hip, the U.S. State Department last week launched a new Web site called “Discover Diplomacy.” It has video clips, it has audio tracks, it has interactive maps and images—it has it all. Possibly due to the difficulty of getting foreigners to listen these days...the State Department has decided to reach out to its domestic constituency.

Eyre highlighted the special role that the U.S. State Department serves in trying to “tear down the electronic curtain” erected by the Iranian government, by using diplomatic measures, provision of technology, and the use of public diplomacy.

The next assistant secretary needs to mainstream these twenty-first century tools into our statecraft and public diplomacy—and coordinate activities across the department. In other words, pick up and expand where former Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela left off.

The U.S. State Department's Virtual Student Foreign Service is a fledgling effort at harnessing technology to expand and improve American diplomacy. What's most striking about it, though, isn't the technology.

As a public diplomacy exercise, we hope that the “India Is…” contest will encourage people to think of India in creative, interesting and hopefully positive ways. With an eye on drawing participation of young people into the contest, we have planned a marketing campaign across social media including Facebook and Twitter in particular.

New spheres of expression, long closed and forbidden to us, are now open. Reclaiming, defending and efficiently utilising these spaces to debate and promote our visions of the new Arab world will be our most immediate task.

China’s rise to become the second largest economy in the world has inevitably seen it invest projects at home and abroad that have the potential to challenge other states. One recent such development is the country’s beefing up of its communications satellites capabilities.

Jon Ronson, the British reporter...is currently posting a video series about attempts to “control” the Internet...His investigation in those two videos focuses on an unfortunate effort by some Israelis to produce a counter-flotilla YouTube video this past summer when that issue was at its hottest.