Reading Blogs #11
Following some feedback (or should I say complains) that I got about the length of these digests, I will try to keep them shorter from now on (not sure if it worked this time :) and will try to post them weekly. Let see how that works out.
In the meantime, this week we got:
Comments and suggestions are welcome!
Recently, there was a lot of buzz about broadband in the news and around the blogosphere. Mainly, this is fueled by Obama making the broadband an important component of his economy recovery plan and I intend to discuss it in a separate post. In the meantime, here are some snippets of information from around the web.
“European Commission earmarks €1bn for investment in broadband” – Broadband is becoming the new name for the “digital divide”. According to the item: “In December 2007, broadband connection was available to around 93% of Europeans, mostly in densely populated areas. However 30% of the EU rural population still has no access to high speed internet.” But then there are also differences in the quality of connection and also the fact that it is available, does not mean that people actually adopt it (the actual penetration rates stood at 21.7%). The money is aimed to be injected into an existing “Rural Development” program and should be used to co-finance projects with private players. See more info here.
“Korea gets 1Gbps Internet by 2012” – And they also plan to increase the wireless broadband to 10Mb per second so people could watch TV on their handhelds. That, together with re-allocation of existing spectrum, is supposed to cost $24.6 billion, but will also create 120K new jobs in the country. See more info here.
“Irish Government to Expand Mobile Broadband Coverage to Rural Areas” – They expect to invest €223 million and create 170 (I hope it was not misspelled) direct job while preserving and creating (indirectly I guess) hundreds. I wish they would provide a more detailed analysis of how they expect this to happen. The UK government in the meantime wants the entire country to have 2 MB per second connection by 2012 – “UK: Broadband in every home by 2012?“.
Of course, there are some critical voices rising about the broadband rush, particularly in the US. Rohan Samarajiva of LirneAsia is explaining – “Why unconditional broadband subsidies can be bad” – and here is the Economist analysis he mentions in his post – “Not so fast“. Another analysis is coming from Lawrence Baker of BuddeBlog – “To What Extent Will The US Broadband Stimulus Package Provide a….Stimulus?“. Yochai Benkler is answering some of this critique (via thoughts about k4d) – “Broadband Stimulus“.
Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations
“Generations Online in 2009” – PEW report showing that more people are now doing more online. Kind of related to this – “Moms using social media, mobile to connect, monitor kids” – as the say: “if you can’t beat them, join them”.
“ICT and changing mindsets in Education” – A free, online book under CC license discussing the uses of ICT in education in developing countries; haven’t read the whole thing of course, but it looks like an interesting resource.
Some country related updates:
- Argentina – mobile penetration
- China – IT spending
- China – mobile subscribers
- India – mobile subscribers
- Nigeria – mobile subscribers
- Pakistan – mobile penetration decline
- South Africa – mobile penetration
- UAE – mobile subscribers
- Uganda – mobile subscribers
Most numbers above kind of contradict the following NY Times article, which suggests that the mobile market is saturated – “Can the Cellphone Industry Keep Growing?” (via Lirne Asia, which also criticized this idea)
Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions
“A Fresh Look at Global Governance: Exploring Objective Criteria for Representation” – The Center for Global development published this working paper proposing new criteria for representation in the global governance; they argue that the current systems (primarily UN, G7, G20, and OECD) overrepresent some countries and underrepresent others; their scheme is based on population and GDP as the basis for representation; I am only starting reading about models of governance and related issues, so I cannot really judge the proposal, but I thought it is worth sharing.
“Telco stimulus package – Australian case study” – An argument for open infrastructure, which is followed by an example – “Open networks delivering the goods for all“. Another instance of support for open/shared infrastructure can be found in – “The Swedish Model”
“Who’s got game? Introducing the GamesBeat 2009 startup competition” – If you are into game design, you may want to check this competition out.
I don’t know much detail about solar energy, but I found this TED talk really interesting (as well as the fact that their final prototype looks like a flower):
This is of course not as cool as some of these ideas – “Inlet-Outlet: Powering your house with exercise” :)
And as long as we are on the topic of environment, here is a summary of a recent contest for designing eco-friendly cars – “EcoCAR competition unveils student designs for cars of the future“.
The OLPC project is not doing that well this year, which triggered some analysis and rethinking of the enterprise. For example we see such thoughts as this – “Evaluation & Recommendations for OLPC Organization” – this – “The XO Files Part IV: New Years Resolutions for OLPC” (where you can see the criticism very clearly between the lines)- this – “What if OLPC and Sugar Labs were For-Profit?” – and this – “OLPC Should Be Three Related Organizations“. You may find it interesting if you’ve been following the project so far.
“India’s $10 laptop isn’t a laptop after all” – One of many posts expressing the disappointment form the recently revealed results of the Indian’s government project; the result is more of a hard disk with wireless capabilities for more than $10 of course.
“Afghanistan to Boost Mobile Coverage in Underserved Areas” – I think the title speak for itself and the link contains some specifics.
“Google Bus Will Introduce Internet to New Users in India” – I heard there was an internet motorcycle, but the bus looks much more futuristic.
“More websites blocked including RFI and Deutsche Welle” – The other side of internet filtering; I wonder how these steps are justified to the Iranian public. In the meantime – “EU media chief rules out Internet freedom law” – another example to how complex it is to try regulating the internet. On a related note, you may be interested in taking a look at this project aimed at making legal information about freedom of expression more accessible – “Media Law And Freedom Of Expression“.
“Google’s Clout Grows as Tech Initiatives Take Shape” – WSJ review of Google’s lobbying activities.
“Amazon grows sales despite sagging retail market” – A ray of light in times of darkness, it would be really interesting to study how they do that. The Wall Street journal offers a broader analysis of e-commerce in times of recession – “A Silver Lining in E-Commerce“.
“Global Mobile Phone Shipments Dropped by 10% in Q4 2008” – Another sign of the crisis alongside with – “Global semiconductor sales fall 2.8 percent in 2008, first decline since 200” – and – “VC performance dipped … back in Q3 2008” (there is an explanation in the post to why such old data may be interesting).
“Blogs and Online Sources Influencing Tech Buyers” – Seems pretty natural to me, but it is interesting to read someone else’s thoughts about it.
“TV station sues blogger for criticising its coverage” – A really interesting case that somewhat reminded me the Digg controversy about a year and a half ago; in a nutshell: an Indian blogger criticized the coverage of one of the Indian station of the Mombay attack, got sued by the TV station, removed the post and published an apology, the Indian blogosphere reacted. Read more about it here.
“Huffington Post’s Lerer teaches journalism students to think like VCs” – I found this a very thought provoking post, which got me thinking about how embedded our societies are in the media and how the media are embedded in our societies; this post suggests (perhaps implicitly) that the nature of journalism and the social role of journalists are changing; to me it resonated with Mark Deuze’s recent blog post about a book he is writing focusing on our life being in the media (as opposed with media) – “Media Life [abstract]“.
“The Evolution of Facebook” – A retrospect from a Blog Around The Clock on their use of Facebook and generational changes that happened there. I found it particularly interesting in light of a recent discovery of an instance where a person created Facebook profile for his child when he was still a fetus. His father updated the dilation during the birth and now, when the kid is born, you can follow up his own status updates and even befriend him (he already has 15 friends). A whole new level of exposure and really early adoption of technology :)
The Russian president also continues developing his website. IN one of my last posts I wrote about him opening the website to comments. In his last address (RU) about higher education in Russia he explicitly mentioned his intention to address the users’ comments. It will be interesting to see that.
“The Policy Wiki: A social experiment” – An experiment by the Dominion Institute and the Aurea Foundation, which reminds me of our WikiCandidate project, as it uses a wiki to discuss policy matters, or more so, to reach shared/agreed policy positions.
Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff
“Start-Up Uses Online Games to Teach Math” – I am always inspired by innovative uses of technology in education; combining learning and fun is not easy, yet I do think that current MICTs have an adventage in the ability to combine the two, compared to the traditional methods.
