Blog Tips

Iran held their presidential elections on Friday June 12. Late that evening, the current President Ahmadinejad was declared the winner. His rival Mousavi called the results a “charade” and on June 13, thousands of protesters took to the street.

That Saturday June 13, I was sitting in Rome, Italy. Thousands of miles away from Tehran. I was writing an article about social media, when I saw tweets coming in from people in Tehran. At first, they twittered simple messages as “It looks like people are coming onto the streets, protesting”. Soon, they tweeted links to YouTube videos they took with their mobile phones.
I scanned the mainstream media. CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera,.. I did Google News searches for “Iran Protests”… No reports.

By noon time, there were that many tweets coming in from Iran, the “#iranelection” tag shot to Twitter’s hall of fame. Still nothing on CNN, BBC,… I started a new post. The first line read “Something’s brewing in Iran and people are reporting”.

Here is a slightly edited version of my original post, written on the first day of the protests. I repost it on BlogTips as it shows the power of social media.

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There is a mass of interesting tools available for the serious and less serious blogger. Here are 10 free tools I use almost daily for my blog.

1. Picasa

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