This week some Independent Senators complained that their Parliamentary Committees were left out of Government's plan to broadcast live sittings. Government allocated some $10 million to this end. Now, how do you spend $10 million on live broadcasts? I don't know. What I do know is that it would be a lot more affordable to webcast the sittings of Parliament and you wouldn't have to exclude anyone. In fact the whole thing could be controlled remotely. Set up the cameras, the webhosting, design the website and you're live for 1 billion Internet users around the world, not just 1.6 million who live here. How would you fund it? Well, I can't see it costing anywhere near $1 million, but let's just say it does. There are at least two ways you can fund it. First, it would be difficult to think that after the government justified a budget of $10 million to broadcast the sittings of Parliament only, the same government would turn around and say it will cost nothing additional to broadcast the sittings of the Parliamentary Committees too. So Government is likely to be willing to spend some more. The second method is a lot simpler: sell ads. It shouldn't be too difficult to find a couple of companies with deep pockets that want to get on the good side of Parliamentarians by making them familiar faces on the World Wide Web. Who knows, Trinidad & Tobago might end up being the first Parliament ever to webcast everything. Yea for transparency! Now, on to Carnival. As some of you may have read in past Internet Opportunities, Breaking News sells "Live Help" software that allows website owners to monitor traffic on their websites in real time. This is a lot more than just stats. "Live Help" software actually allows you to know when someone is on your site, from whence they came and what they're looking for. You don't get to see who the person is but you do see an I.P. address moving around. Over the Carnival weekend, I made an amazing discovery. People were searching for "Carnival Webcam." Now, here comes the freebie. We did a search and "CarnivalWebcam.com" and "CarnivalWebcast.com" are available for registration. Go to the International Internet Authority and see for yourself. So next year, if you're a Carnival person (because I'm not), you might want to register these names and set up a website webcasting Carnival live. There are a lot of people overseas thirsty to see the action, the market of homesick Trinbagonians who can't tell their bosses, "Doh ask meh to wuk for Carnaval!" |
