BAH Opens The Persia House, Provides Detailed Analysis On Events In Iran And Persian Gulf (Persia-house.com)

Booz Allen Hamiliton has just announced the opening of its online analytic resource, the Persia House.

The Persia House focuses on events in Iran, specifically, and the Persian Gulf in general. It covers a wide variety of topics including economics, security, domestic and international politics and nuclear proliferation among others. It even covers culture and humor in order to provide the widest possible context for its analytic offerings.

Much of the content of the site seems to center around Persia House's proprietary translations of recent articles. What differentiates these offerings from other translation services is the Persia House's often lengthy analysis of the articles and the context in which they were written. I particularly appreciated the analyst notes regarding the religious and political leanings of the various sources that the Persia House analysts use. Beyond the current news, the Persia House also provides more extensive analysis on a variety of topics. I do wish that it had a few more relevant graphics (maps, videos, etc.) but I suspect that those features will come with time.

In short, I am no Iranian expert but it looks like pretty good stuff.

BAH intends to make the service a subscription service at the end of the month but for now it is free to anyone interested. I know that they are also very interested in feedback so do not hesitate to leave a comment here or on their website.

Syrian Nuclear Reactor Video (USIC via Veoh)

The recent release of the US Intelligence Community's (USIC) video interpretation of the purpose of a Syrian facility bombed by the Israeli's back in September, 2007 is an interesting story but is even more interesting as an example of how the IC "translates" intelligence reports from their traditional print format (with a few graphics) to a primarily multimedia format with just enough text to highlight the findings.

We have run these kinds of projects for a number of years here (in our Intelligence Communications classes) and I have found that the most difficult thing to do is to make the video without coming across as "selling" the finding. I think the analysts and production people who did this report met that goal, at least, successfully (though you do wish that a 50 billion dollar organization would have been able to find a better microphone...). See for yourself:

Blogs Of Interest (INMM and Web 2.0)

There are two new blogs that are worth following if you are interested in the particular niche of information that they address. The Mercyhurst student chapter of the Institute of Nuclear Material Management maintains an on-going blog about nuclear proliferation, counter-proliferation and other issues here. Likewise, Chris, a student at Mercyhurst, is exploring how Web 2.0 tools could be used by the intelligence community here.