New media tools for polls
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Jul 15, 2010 - Straits Times
New media tools for polls
by Jeremy Au Yong
IN THE next general election, officials at places such as polling and counting centres will have mobile Internet access and the ability to make video calls to each other.
It will be the first time election officials will have such new media tools at hand, although how they will be used has yet to be spelt out.
Details of the impending injection of these tools were described in a tender document issued by the Elections Department last month.
The document shows the department wanting to buy at least 1,000 mobile broadband devices and SIM cards.
In addition, it wants to buy 'video collaboration services'. Such a service would allow election officials to make video calls to one another, using Government-supplied computers fitted with the mobile broadband devices.
Typical mobile broadband devices provided by telcos here are about the size of an USB thumbdrive and let computers into which they are plugged, access the Internet via telecommunication networks.
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election coming.
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Why need such devices?
Handphones not enough?
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must be fanciful?