Reading blogs #18
With the recent move and settling in a new place, I find it really difficult to keep up to date with my RSS feeds. So, some of the information below is a bit old, but I still hope you will find it interesting.
Here is what we got this time:
Feel free to share your thoughts!
Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations
“The Communications Market 2009 (August)” (via Andrew Chadwick) – An OFCOM report about the state of the UK communications market; rather detailed and interesting.
“Presidential approval tracker” (via FlowingData) – Follow and compare US presidential approval ratings on USA Today.
“MAPLight.org” – A website I came across, which provides detailed information on the voting history of US legislators and cross-tabulates it with information on donations those legislators have received from various interested parties; could be a useful tool if you are interested in investigating a particular issue. Another related website I came across by reading comments on Freedom to Tinker, is YourMapper, which maps out various local data sets, like this one about crime in Washington DC.
Speaking about maps, “New Scientist” has an interesting collection of internet-related maps – “Exploring the exploding internet” (via FlowingData). Another related map was actually created by the xkcd comics.
A slightly different map can be found here – “Who owns RuNet?” – but that one requires some knowledge of Russian.
“How Different Groups Spend Their Day” (via @kpearce) – Another thought provoking visualization from the NY Times showing how different clusters of the US society spend their day; try playing with it by comparing the different groups.
“Towards the future of the Internet” – A blog that follows an EU Commission sponsored project looking into this very question; I was invited to participate in the survey, but I could not complete it, because to me the questions were too general and I found it really difficult answering them without feeling that I am making huge compromises with myself; it’ll be interesting to see the results, but in the meantime, the blog holds some curious resources.
This time there is only one country specific stat:
- Russia – Mobile content market.
Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions
“Jay Rosen: ‘The Web is People‘” – A brief reminder about some basic ideas behind the web; you may want to check out Jay Rosen’s bio and blog.
“May All Your Standards Be Simple and Evolvable” – A thoughtful essay about standards in the world of information technology – an aspect that as users we pay little if any attention to – written by a really interesting character.
“StikK” (via NY Times) – A website created at Yale, which allows you to make contracts with yourself; the basic gist is that you commit yourself to a long-term goal and put money on it, but if you report to them that you have not met your goal, the money will be donated to charity.
“International Lessons“ – A webcast and presentation from an FCC workshop on international lessons of broadband adoption; I think Benkler’s presentation is built off the work of some of my Berkman summer colleagues; on a related note, here is a collection of reports on the broadband.gov.
There are some interesting developments approaching in the realm of Internet Governance and scene is heating up. So, on a related note, there is going to be US local IGF prior to the conference in Egypt. Here is also an interesting resource on the activities of ICANN and a document (PDF) on cyberspace policy, with a very strong focus on security, created by the Obama administration.
“The Public Voice” – is an initiative that seems to enable representatives of public to participate in the Internet Governance related debates. I have not participated in any meetings yet, but I intend to check it out.
“Russia Wants to Achieve Independence with Russian Software” – The Russian government seems to realize that code has politics and mixing it with economic incentives is developing protectionist policies.
Triggered by Jonathan Zittrain’s interest in cloud-computing, I looked at some could-computing related items and thought to share a couple. “Sitting on Cloud Nine” – This piece makes an argument about cloud computing being basically a financially driven construct; it’s not about technological innovation, but about ways of thinking about technology and making money out of it. Here is another piece where you can find a more critical take on things – “Creaner on Cloud Computing“. But I am sure there is much more out there and the recent Gmail blackout has probably generated a healthy wave of skeptical thoughts on this subject.
“Stats Confirm It: Teens Don’t Tweet” and “Teens Don’t Tweet… Or Do They?” – I’ve been overexposed to Twitter this summer and here are two items on the topic; the first is Mashable report on a Nielsen study and the second is danah boyd’s response.
Just like Rasmus, I first saw a link to this article on Siva Vaidhyanathan’s Facebook feed – “Facebook Exodus” – What do you think? What are your observations?
“WhoRunsGov” – A really interesting resource created by the Washington Post company, which collects information about the individuals who run the US at the moment; it is also an interesting model of moderated collaborative content creation.
Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff
“Project Natal – Milo Demo (video) – the future of interaction with the screen” – I think the title is slightly misleading, but the post and the video are about a new X-Box(?) gig where one can interact with a virtual character in more sophisticated ways than we have experienced so far; not sure what to make of it yet.
“Beneath this steel beats the heart of a . . . bicycle?” – A story about a person who turned bike building into art; make sure to watch the video!
Finally, here is a video (via JOHO) of a really impressive robotic hand – behold:
Dmitry,
Thanks for pointing out Your Mapper along with such an impressive list of other links and video. Natal is going to be great when Microsoft releases it next year.
I thought you’d like to know the DC crime features have been updated. There are now new pages that give you an overview, heatmap, category breakdown, list of locations, and more.
http://www.yourmapper.com/location/DC/washington/141/crime-reports
Michael at Your Mapper
Thank you, Michael! I will keep following.