With the special Technorati Live8 focus indexing over 12,000 postings, including mine, and Sifry's call for 100000 postings, videoblogs, etc., I was rather dismayed to find that in the heat of the action (i.e. today, yesterday) around the unfolding G8 Summit in Gleneagles, it was surprisingly difficult to get hold of breaking news from bloggers or links thereto, as opposed to mainstream media and their annointed bloggers, with a few exceptions such as indymedia and others noted below.

Undoubtedly people have other things on their minds, but I suppose I had rather high expectations for some live coverage, considering that Howard Rheingold had featured, under the heading 'Smart Mobs and the Power of the Mobile Many', an item entitled no less than:

"G-8 Protest Moblog"

But wait a minute... that story is actually here, dated 1st June 2003, referring to the G8 Summit in Evian two years ago!

Sure, there's plenty of stuff, but (a) nowhere near what there should be, given the high rate of growth/penetration and the already-significant uses of the technology that we saw over two years ago (b) the best coverage looks to me like it is to be found via 1-step links from the so-called 'Old Media', e.g. the likes of the BBC, The UK Guardian, and even Forbes magazine. [I know, calling them 'Old' is unfair because the BBC and the Guardian have themselves been undertaking groundbreaking and award-winning work in rolling out new media experiments including videoblogging and podcasting, on a large scale -- but my point is that I expected to see a bit more independent ad hoc activity.]

The news is changing fast (e.g. the main protest itself has gone from 'allowed' to 'unilaterally banned' to 'allowed' again in the past 2 hours), and I'd expect to see some more ad hoc coverage; maybe that'll appear later.

Here's a sample of what I'm referring to:

BBC G8 Summit Site: Extremely thorough up-to-the-minute coverage, as you'd expect, but what about the bloggers? The BBC has that covered too... see next...

BBC Videoblogger: Christopher Williams, participating in the protests, is sending videoblog reports from his 3G phone.

The Guardian Unlimited G8 Newsblog: lots of breaking news from many 'reporters'/bloggers feeding back to the site.

Guardian G8 Metablog Site Listing: They don't call it that, but in fact it's a useful tour of what a small number of other bloggers are saying, and a request for more pointers.

Forbes list of G8 protest blogs: That's right, your eyes have not deceived you. Steve McGookin, a Financial Times journalist undertaking research into media and politics, writes for Forbes.com, "Home Page For The World's Business Leaders", and provides a brief walkthrough of assorted protest and anarchist sites.

The rest are more obvious to readers of this blog, but I'll list them anyway:

Flickr G8 photos: often a good place to pick up breaking news photos.

Technorati G8 postings: notice how The Guardian Unlimted Newsblog (same as the one I pointed to above) completely dominates the listings - full credit to them for becoming serious players in this niche)

Google G8 Protest News

IndyMedia: Generic home for alternative viewpoints galore, and you have to dig down into some of the comments for some very-late-breaking news updates.

On a final note, my understanding from what I've heard on the (old media) news is that, in contrast to 'The Smart Mobs Vision', many protesters are using really conventional tools and technology, like walkie-talkies, VHF 2-way radios, and printed maps. I imagine this is due to the advantages of the point-to-point nature of radio communications -- no operator-controlled cell towers required -- and the reliability of printed maps.