Enjoy!

Recent news related

Not so much news at this point, but still an interesting and important development.  Not so long ago a federal court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lacks the authority to enforce net neutrality in a case where Comcast chose to discriminate against BitTorent users on their network.  This is interesting because on the one hand, this decision raises questions about other internet related policy initiatives by the FCC, such as cybersecurity, privacy and consumer-protection policies.  On the other hand, it is highlighting the need to redefine the media landscape in light of the change in the technological environment.  Today, internet service providers (ISPs) are regulated differently from the traditional media or traditional telephone companies that have much more checks and balances.  This ruling can trigger redefinition of the ISPs placing them in a similar category with other companies oversaw by the FCC or perhaps a creation of new category  (yes, i am thinking about something like MICT category).  In the meantime, however, the FCC decided to not intervene.  Here is a good discussion of the issue on NPR.

Another big (old) news was the launch of the iPad, which was met with great hype and many hopes, but also with a substantive amount of criticism.  One article used an example where Apple rejected Pulitzer winner cartoonist’s iPhone app because it “ridicules public figures.”  It is used to raise questions about about the direction Apple is taking and the online experience it is tailoring for us.  Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing voiced his concerns about the locked nature of the iPad and so did David Weinberg.  Harry McCracken, posted a really thorough comparison of iPad to the various other devices.  I will let you judge.

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“Youth, Privacy and Reputation” (PDF) – The Berkman Center has released a massive literature about “the intersections of youth, reputation, and privacy online, focusing on youth attitudes and practices.”

“Google is way bigger than you realize” (via Bob) – A visualization of comparative sizes of server farms owned by Google, Intel, Facebook, and a number of other large players.

Particular stats:

• Canada – Internet use

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

“FCC hands Hollywood the keys to your PC, home theater and future” – An opinion piece from Cory Doctorow about a recent decision of the FCC to allow “Selective Output Control” technologies in your TV set-top box.

“Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative” and “dear facebook, freedom or friends? that’s not a choice” – Just a couple of examples of people’s reactions to the recent changes in Facebook’s privacy settings and the introduction of the global “Like” button.  What do you think?

“How to Regulate the Internet Tap” – An opinion calling for government non-intervention in net neutrality issues.

Digital Divide

“The Digital Divide Will Ensure a Broadband Ghetto” (via Josh) – An interesting discussion, especially in the comments, of the broadband situation in the US.

“Telecom companies seek to make Haiti a mobile nation” – Another interesting debate in the sphere of the digital divide – will the future be wireless or we will still need wires to gain appropriate bandwidth?

“The $99 sort-of-Smartphone” – A report on a US $99 smartphone aimed for the developing market and a short discussion about whether or not this is a sustainable development.  I apologize in advance  for the narration :)

“Two Billion Laptops? It May Not Be Enough” (via @rafik) – A NYT article about OLPC, its vision, challenges, and criticism.

“Bridging the Online Language Barrier” – An NPR story on the various ways of dealing with multilingualism online.

MICT regulation

“$4 Million Spent Lobbying Congress on Domain Names” (vai @IGPAlert) – A brief note summarizing the investment of various companies with interest in domain names in their Washington DC activities.  Take a look what they spent the money on.

“The Supreme Court: The Anonymity Of The Talkbacks Should Be Preserved” – The article in the link is in Hebrew and it reports on the Israeli Supreme Court decision to maintain the anonymity of the people leaving comments online.  The claim was to force the ISPs to reveal the identity of the comments’ authors for the purpose of a civil suit, but it got dismissed.  This is an interesting addition to the debate about ISPs as intermediaries in regulation of the Internet content.

“Public Policy Questions for Internet” – A 2005 article outlining an agenda for internet governance public policy debate.  Very long and still surprisingly relevant.

“New” media

“52 Percent Of Bloggers Consider Themselves Journalists” (via @joeymornin) – A report on a recent study with the observation in the title as well as the fact that most bloggers rely on other blogs and Twitter in their research.

“Twitter Updates, the 18th Century Edition” – A report on the paper written by one of our professors at Cornell, where she is telling a story of 18th century diaries, which resemble Twitter updates.

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“BeetleCam: Safari via remote control” – A project from two British brothers photographers where they mounted a camera on a remotely controlled car to take close pictures of animals in Africa; pretty cool!

“SA pigeon ‘faster than broadband‘” – A BBC article about a group in South Africa who compared the speeds of sending information online with sending it with a mail pigeon.  I heard about Yossi Vardi doing the same thing in Israel a few years ago with a similar result.

A TED talk by Jane McGonigal of the Institute of the Future about utilizing games for changing people’s behavior and making the world a better place.  I think she takes way too long to get to the point, but if you happen to listen to the end, I would love to hear what you think (also see the discussion on TED website):

A couple of old videos trying to envision the future of MICT.  It is really interesting to watch them from where we are today (thanks to Josh)

Recent news related

Whether you like or hate online porn, you are probably aware of its existence and attempts to regulate it in one way or another.  One of the aspects of this debate, which has recently come back to the public attention, may have far reaching repercussions to the politics of the internet.  I am talking about the famous debate about .xxx top level domain.  The highlight is that an independent review panel at ICANN decided that this top level domain was denied in an unfair fashion (79 page long PDF; Guardian).  The question now is what will ICANN’s board decide to do about it.  In light of the panel’s decision, ICM, the registry pushing this domain name, claims that the domains will be available this year (more here), but others in the industry disagree.  Rod Beckstorm, CEO and president of ICANN, wrote a blog post praising ICANN’s accountability mechanisms.  Milton Mueller replied with a critical assessment of Beckstrom’s reaction and calling for acknowledging the mistakes of the past and fixing them.  I recommend reading the comments to both posts as well – very interesting (more related comments here).  The Internet Commerce Association, an organization that unites registrars and domainers, published an extensive post arguing against the idea of .xxx, because it views it as an attempt of ICANN to get involved in content regulation.

Another conversation that hit the news-wire recently was a discussion of internet and freedom in the US Senate.  Here are some snippets and reactions.  Google called to include internet freedom as a free trade condition.  Ryan Singel of Wired warns against “Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet” (an opposite opinion, also in Wired ).

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“Measuring the Information Society 2010” – ITU has released a new report that shows some interesting numbers about adoption of information technology and its costs.

“Measuring Typosquatting Perpetrators and Funders” (PDF) – Some alternative titles of this post could be “Typosquatting is the 10th most popular site out there” or “Google makes almost half a billion a year from typosquatting.”

“Broadband adoption in America” – An FCC issued report showing the results of a survey about broadband adoption in USA (the link leads to the PDF); here is a NYT article about the study (thank you, Josh).  At the same time, the Social Science Research Council released another study, entitled “Broadband Adoption in Low-Income Communities,” which took a qualitative look into the same issues.  Over at the FCC blog, John Horrigan, the author of the first, quantitative study, reflected on the finding of both report.

“Four Ways of Looking at Twitter” – A blogpost and examples of various ways of visualizing information on Twitter.

“Study links violent video games to violent thought, action” – The Washington Post reports about a meta analysis of studies about video games and violence; the original analysis makes the statement in the title, but the article also includes references to some critique of the study; overall it reminds the early days of communication research.

Another interesting and rather broad resource about how young people interact with “new” media is the Good Play project (via Oya).

And if we are on Goolge, they have recently released “Google Public Data Explorer” – a tool that allows you to play with data from a number of sources and share it on the web.  The current list of sources includes: the World Bank, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), the California Department of Education, Eurostat, the U.S. Center for Disease Control, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.  However there seems to be very few datasets available at the moment.

“The Internet of Things” (via @rsqr) – McKinsey report objects gaining connectivity and potential repercussions of this development.

“New gTLDs Will Cost Less than $.10 for Each Trademark Worldwide” (PDF) – A working paper by Minds + Machines, which looks at the cost of introduction of new TLDs; I think it’s an interesting insight for the ongoing debate on the subject.

“Capturing the promise of mobile banking in emerging markets” – McKinsey report about technology and finance for and among the world poorest.

“Internet and e-commerce industry in Lithuania” (via i-policy) – A brief about the state of e-affairs in Lithuania.

“China Global Investment Tracker: 2010” – It is hard to neglect the growing global role of China; the Heritage Foundation released a report with some fancy maps about the global Chinese investment; for example, Africa, is the single largest beneficiary of Chinese investments; you may also want to read the Foreign Policy commentary on the report.

“Ranking Web of World Universities” – An unusual ranking of the higher education institutions, this report attempts to capture the online visibility of various universities across the  globe.  I have not read their methodology in detail and I am not completely sure what is that they are trying to achieve with this metric, but I thought I’d share.

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

“The Digital Dictatorship” – Evgeny Morozov is in his usual role of critique of the revolutionary discourse surrounding social media and Rita King trying to debunk him – “The evolution of revolution.”  What do you think?  Who is making a better point?

“Media Development Needs Unified Research for Digital Age” (via Josh) – A review of a symposium about media based interventions and developmental efforts and how to study those; interesting piece to think about this field.

Stefana Broadbent of the University College of London gave an intriguing TED talk where she argued the media, information, and communication technologies are redefining and reshaping intimacy in our lives.  What do you think?

Also, the Internet got nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and there is a debate going on about it.  Some people argue that it is fullish.  Others argue that it deserves the prize.  What do you think?  And who will get the money if the internet wins?

Digital Divide

“First Solar Powered Rural Internet Kiosk installed in the South Coast of Kenya” – ISOC Community Grants in action.

The FCC and the Knight Foundation held America’s (read US) Digital Inclusion Summit.  Here are the highlights as presented by the organizers themselves:

FCC/Knight America's Digital Inclusion Summit from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

MICT regulation

“Broadband carriers speak out against FCC regulation” – A brief nice update from the Washington Post on the state of debate between the FCC and the telcos; I think it is interesting because it is part of the struggle of defining internet as a medium and its outcomes can have long lasting repercussions.

At the same time “FCC Chairman Genachowski confident in authority over broadband, despite critics“.  There is also a video of him talking about the need for a broadband plan for the US, but I did not find that interview particularly informative.

“Court Finds Domain Names are Located Where Registry and Registrar are Located” – An interesting precedent in determining jurisdiction in online disputes.

“Apple pulls sexually explicit apps from iTunes” – The title is slightly misleading as this NYT article actually tackles the debate about content regulation online.

Berkman Center’s response (PDF) to the FCC’s Notice of Inquiry on “Empowering Parents and Protecting Children in an Evolving Media Landscape” (PDF) seems like a good resource on the subject.

MICT business

“Lessons for U.S. Media From European Paid-Content Plays” – Inspired by a recent decision of the NY Times to re-introduce a paywall, this article surveys various European models of paid content.

“New” media

“Understanding the Participatory News Consumer” (PDF) – New report from the PEW Internet and American Life project about how, where, and to what extend people in the US access the news and interact with it online.

“Just press print” – An article from the Economist about the blossoming industry of self publishing.

MICT and politics

“Social Networking and Constituent Communications” – A report of the Congressional Research Service about how the members of the house use Twitter (the link leads to a PDF).

“The cloud cannot ignore geopolitics” – An interesting analysis of the link between political realities and their impact on the cloud paradigm.  On a related note, you may want to check out this interactive data protection heat map from Forrester.

As if an intentional illustration to the article, the Open Net Initiative at Berkman, published the following findings about Bing filtering its search results – “Sex, Social Mores, and Keyword Filtering: Microsoft Bing in the ‘Arabian Countries’” – yes, its not just Google and Yahoo.

“The open society” – The Economist report about governments opening up their databases and letting people play with data.

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“Ex-Africa” (via The Wadi) – An Israeli startup that aims to bring financial transparency to Africa and give Western investors tools to evaluate African bunsinesses; it is really interesting to see how financial and investment instruments of the West are finding their ways to the developing countries.

“Why the internet will fail (from 1995)” – A really fun piece to read in retrospective of15 years; made me wonder about some of my skeptical thinking.

“ViewChange.org” – Is an imitative in the making that seems to aim to do something similar to what Positive News in UK are doing, but in a more Web 2.0-ish way:

This is slightly old, but still cool – playing Guitar Hero using an actual guitar (via Veronica):

Recent news related

The preparations for the next Internet Governance Forum are under way and on February 9th Geneva hosted the first round of Open Consultations.  I haven’t had a chance to watch the recording or read the transcript yet, but there were a few reactions to it already in the blogosphere.   Jeremy Malcolm of the IGF Watch has pointed out the political struggle between the various UN bodies that claim the authority over deciding the future of the IGF and Wolfgang Kleinwachter provided an analysis of this development alerting against erosion of the principle of multistakeholderism from the future Internet Governance arrangement.

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“Next Generation Connectivity” (PDF) – One of the (if not the) most comprehensive review of broadband policies worldwide; commissioned by the FCC, conducted by the Berkman Center.  If you don’t have the time or stamina for the entire thing, there is a Berkman radio bit about it and there is an NPR take on it.  There is also an interview with Yochai Benkler where he discusses the report:

“Sustainable Development and ICTs” (via @ictlogist) – A special issue of Information, Communication & Society; unfortunately, it is behind a paywall (with an exception of one article).

“Development as politics” – A promising interview with Nobel Laureate Michale Spence, recommended by Chris Blattman from Yale, about international development and politics.  You may find the report he refers to here.

“Obstacles to social mobility weaken equal opportunities and economic growth, says OECD study” – An OECD study about social mobility where they demonstrate that parents’ socioeconomic status and education are the two most influential factors on the child’s socioeconomic success; i wonder if the dynamics are similar in the non OECD countries.

“The 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review” (via holesinthenet) – A report that details the trends in usage of social networks and other “new” media in the US.

And some regional stats:

• Azerbaijan – Broadband
• Europe – Mobile, internet
• USA – Internet

If you are into regional stats, World Bank made their API available for developers to play with their data and also offer some widgets on their website, like this one, showing Internet penetration worldwide (based on the ITU data):

Internet users (per 100 people) - 2008

“Feltron 2009 Annual Report” – Or as Flowing Data called it – “OCD Made Sexy” – Nicholas Feltron collects data about himself throughout the year and then publishes it in really cool infographics.

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

“Media Piracy in Emerging Economies” – Joe Karaganis, of the Social Science Research Council, presented a forthcoming six-country study of media piracy at the Berkman Center  It turns out to be quite an interesting aspect of MICT diffusion and adoption.  In the link you will find the video,  but you can also download the audio recording, and read David Weinberg’s live blogging from the event.

“Africa’s Eastern Promise” (via Chris Blattman) – An interesting and thoughtful analysis of Africa-China relations and the role and the interests of the later in the developmental efforts of the former.

“Russia’s New Media Paradox” (via @evgenymorozov) – Maxim Trudolyubov, of the NY Review of Books, writes a very detailed and thoughtful analysis of the state of “new” media in Russia and the new affordances it brings to both civic discourse and ability to suppress it; I think it resonates well with some earlier arguments of Evgeny Morozov about how the “new” media aid oppressive regimes.

“Revising the Lisbon Strategy through the OECD Innovation Strategy” – A speech by OECD Deputy Secretary-General Pier Carlo Padoan on topics of innovation and entrepreneurship.

“The economics of child soldiering” – A blog post about research conducted by Cris Blattman of Yale, where he takes a very (perhaps too) analytical approach to the problem of child soldering; I found it particularly interesting because of the links one can potentially make between developing human capital as a way of fighting this horrific phenomenon.

Digital Divide

“Hope founders where ministers lack e-mail” (via @evgenymorozov) – A apiece on the efforts and challenges of bringing the Sudanese government online.

MICT regulation

“German Government Steps Away from 2009 Filtering Plan” and “Italian gov’t backs down slightly over Web regulation bill” (via Information Policy) – It is actually nice to see a different take on content regulation; most of other countries seem to tighten their grip of the content.

“Icelandic Modern Media Initiative” (via @rmack) – An even more interesting initiative by the government of Iceland to sort out the new media environment in an open-minded manner.  As La Quadrature du Net describes this, it is a parliamentarian resolution aimed “to initiate a legislative process in order to guarantee by law the freedom of expression and communication on the Internet.”

“Internet Regulations Will Hinder Job Creation” (PDF) – A recent study conducted by the American Consumer Institute that suggests that Net Neutrality regulation will harm job creation; basically what they say is that infrastructure companies generate more investment and more jobs, compared to the companies that build their business based on those networks.

“Bottom Line: The Truth About Network Neutrality & Investment” – An older report from the “Free Press” looking at the links between net neutrality principles and investment; here you can also find criticism of the this report.

MICT business

“Startup Failure Rates — The REAL Numbers” (via comments at Re-gur-gi-tate (n)) – A bit old (2008), but still interesting statistics about the success/failure rates of new businesses, based on a book on the subject (if you are looking for the bottom line, 29% survive).

“Typos may earn Google $500m a year” (via @sdkaaa) – Something that I think is obvious being explained with data and detail; the domain name industry has been making money out of URLs that are misspellings of popular websites by hosting ads there – this article lays out how Google is making quite a lot of money out of it as well.  I still wonder who clicks on ads on those websites?

“New” media

“Will You Be E-Mailing This Column? It’s Awesome” (via @Viil) – A NYT report about a study about the most emailed NYT articles; apparently the longer and the more intellectually engaging articles are getting emailed more.  Surprising!

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“A Brief History of Time… in the New World!” – A nice story about clocks and gravity.

On a bit more serious note, check out “Asia Internet Museum” – I think this is a really interesting initiative as we are not documenting enough the development of this medium.

Also, in a similar vein – “20 Great Talks on the Future of Information” – i think I’ve heard a couple of them in the past, so I think it should be a valuable link to have.

“Save pens. Use Garamond font” – Have you ever wondered how much ink it takes for the various fonts we use?  Flowing Data shares an insight…

“PleaseRobMe.com” (via @evgenymorozov) – A very creative way to raise awareness about how we use and share information from a group that seems equally creative – they call themselves “Forthehack“.

A bit old, but still interesting to listen to – Steve Job’s commencement speech at Stanford in 2005 (via the scholarly kitchen):

“A brief history of pretty much everything” – A nice animation that sums up pretty much everything, which I came across while looking for material for the course I am TAing for this semester.

“Hovercouch” – Somewhat crazy and fun project by one of Veronica’s friends.

Enjoy!

Recent news related

Google’s confrontation with the Chinese government, Hillary Clinton’s speech that followed, and the somewhat anticipated reaction have been all over my RSS feeds, Twitter, and what-not.  Here are some of what I think the more interesting reactions, particularly to the later, diplomatic developments.  Evgeny Morozov of Foreign Policy was one of the first to post his rather critical comments and he has a few points.   Milton Mueller, over at the IGP blog, suggests that Clinton’s speech will backfire (or already is backfiring) in the way the Chinese government will act in the Internet Governance arena; he thinks the speech was an important event, but not in the mainstream view of it as a US stand for internet freedoms.  Finally, Aleks Krotoski, who is working on a BBC documentary about the history of the web, tries to draw a complex picture of opportunities as well as dangers that Internet brings with it; all this triggered by this recent clash.

Another topic that has been recently in the news is the new gadget from Apple – the iPad.  Leaving aside the humorous aspects of its design and name, there are some interesting discussions starting to emerge about the meaning of the direction Apple is taking to the future of our mediated experiences and perhaps the technology-based society.  Jonathan Zittrain published an opinion article in FT warning against Apple’s move towards a more closed and controlled platform.  He sounds both concerned and disappointed with this move from the open to the closed.  The comments on that article seem to disagree with Zittrain, but no so Rory Cellan-Jones who blogs for BBC.  Interestingly, the comments on the British website were not as defensive of Apple.  In another post, from David Parry of U. of Texas, is trying actively to discourage people from buying iPad because he argues it is a bad educational tool.  Finally, you may also want to watch a documentary about Apple fan-base I have posted a link to below – I found it to be really interesting.

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“floatingsheep.org” – A blog of a research project that maps out and analyzes user generated information about places; pretty neat.  Here is an example of their “Great American ‘Pizza’ Map“.

“2009 Year in Review: Filtering, Surveillance, Information Warfare” – The OpenNet Initiative at Berkman Center put up a neat tool that allows you to browse through various instances of filtering, etc. that occurred in 2009.

“Review of 2009: Telecoms During Global Recession” (PDF; via InformationPolicy) – A review of the last year in telecom industry issued by TeleGeography.  They show that while the subscriber base continued to grow almost as during the pre-recession times, the revenue growth has slowed down.  The most interesting observation though is that the developed regions of the world were more affected by the recession compared to the less developed ones.

“More Data To Fuel Metered Pricing” (via @Norm_Lewis) – A summary of a report with some interesting numbers about wirless browsing bandwidth usage (for example, YouTube accounts for 10% of worldwide bandwidth use) which leads the authors to a conclusion that metered pricing is the future for mobile data; I am not a prophet by any stretch of imagination, but I think this signals a tendency towards more expensive mobile internet.

“P2P and Broadband Adoption” – A blogpost about an SSRC study that shows that P2P, and by proxy copyright infringement, is the main driver behind broadband adoption worldwide.

“Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds” (via holesinthenet) – An interesting survey about media consumption of the US youth (not just the internet); because of multitasking, they actually pack in more media than the nominal number of hours.  And another related report from PEW – “Social Media and Young Adults” – mobile is taking over blogging.

“How different age groups are using the internet” (via @Viil) – Somewhat convoluted graphic representation of the subject over time.

“The Future of ICT for Development” – The Global Voices host a collection of blogposts about the online discourse about ICT4D; quite interesting to browse through them.  This is part of a project Berkman Center runs together with Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC).  At the same time, University of Manchester’s Centre for Development Informatics has posted some stats about ICT4D scholarship on their blog – “ICT-for-Development Research: Size and Growth“.  Finally, and this may not belong to this section of the digest, Michael Best asks: “Do we have an ICT4D field? And do we want one?“

“The top 10 cleantech countries of 2009” (via @gbarzil) – Shawn Lesser of Sustainable World Capital posts brief profiles of a dozen of countries and what they do in terms of green policy and entrepreneurship.

And of course, some regional stats:

• Belarus – online marketing
• UK – SMS
• USA – Internet, broadband, and cell phones
• World – SMS

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

“Obama’s mixed record on tech policy” – An article, written by William Reynolds from Duke Law School;  it goes over some recent steps taken by the Obama administration, but mostly in the realm of copyright.

“Internet Self-Regulation and Fundamental Rights” (via @infopolicy) – An SSRN article discussion the use of ISPs as intermediaries in internet regulation.

“Clay Shirky, info overload, and when filters increase the size of what’s filtered” – David Weinberger from the Berkman Center shares some thoughts about information overload and the changing meaning of filters in this reality.

“Using Mechanical Turk to Crowdsource Humanitarian Response” – Some thoughts and observations from Patrcik Meier who is working on his PhD at Tufts on related subject; I would also recommend to take a good look at his website as he has some really interesting thoughts and observations there.

Digital Divide

“World Computer Exchange” – An interesting initiative that refurbishes computers from the ‘developed’ countries for continuous use in ‘developing’ countries; of course there has been criticism about the global dump for electronics from the global north, i think this project shows how it can be done well.

“UN telecom agency makes plans for Haiti’s present and future” (via @UN) – A plug about ITUs efforts in Haiti; as the amount of news from that region is going down, I think it is actually really interesting to see what grand problems remain to be resolved and what is done about that; there is also a bunch of numbers about the telecom sector in Haiti.

MICT regulation

“Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) and the Office” (via Information Policy) – Yes, there is a new European regulatory body on the block.

“UN chief calls for treaty to prevent cyber war” (via @ITU_News) – A scary article both in terms to the problems it raises and the solutions it proposes.

MICT business

“Mobenzi” – This is a South African company that basically allows crowdsourcing using mobiles; companies can submit any data-related tasks that require human intelligence and people perform them in a distributed fashion, while making some money; interesting idea.

“New” media

“Replacing your TV antenna with an Internet connection by using Boxee or Hulu” – We gave up TV and have been watching TV shows on computers for a while now; this is something that can make us reconsider getting a TV set I think.

“Facebook Largest News Reader?” – HitWise suggests that Facebook is becoming the largest RSS reader on the web.

MICT and politics

“Data.gov.uk versus Data.gov – Which wins?” – FollowingData analyzes the two websites and declares the UK site as a winner.

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“Project H Design” – Sean pointed out this really interesting initiative that designs solutions to ease people’s lives in the challenging regions of the world.

“Real Lives” – A potentially interesting game that allow the participant to simulate life in anyone of the 192 countries based various statistical data about those countries; I have not tried it, but it sounds intriguing and the the demo downloadable from their website allows you to try tree different lives.

“Maga No Need Pay” – My friend ‘Gbenga, who is very much involved in the Nigerian internet-related matters, posted this video, which is a rather innovative way of raising awareness of anti-cyber-crime efforts in his home country.

“MacHeads” – Ever since moving to US I am surrounded by people using Macs and it is quite phenomenal; this is a full length (about an hour) documentary, trying to unpack the phenomenon of Mac users (or more precisely fans) and how it has been changing over the years.  I found it very interesting.

And for those of you who have ever doubted that engineering is cool, here is a reminder from the IBM folks (via Sadat):

This time there are some links related to the comments on the FCC stand on net neutrality, some stats summarizing 2009 as well as some regional stats, a number of provoking ideas on database security, digital collectivism, and more, a little bit on media and environment, and of course some fun stuff.  Enjoy!

Recent news related

One of the (not so) recent topics on the agenda of the US telecom industry is net neutrality.  Back in October the FCC proposed net neutrality rules and recently there was the deadline for submitting comments.  For example, the wireless carriers did their best to distinguish themselves from the wired networks operators.  Skype argued against allowing content discrimination, Amazon argued for allowing it as long as it does not harm other content (more on that).  A think tank Digital Society supported a more nuanced approach to net neutrality claiming the “smart” networks are at the basis of truly neutral web.  Nicholas Bramble of the Yale Information Society Project compiled a nice sample of comments from the various stakeholder.

Also, a lot has been written about the role of technology in Haiti relief efforts, so here is my very small contribution to this discussion – a collection of post disaster shelter solutions published by the MAKE magazine.

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“Internet 2009 in numbers” (via @rafik) – Spam, webpages, and much more… enjoy :)

“BuddeComm’s 2010 Global Telecoms Industry Snapshot” – Usually I don’t like posting forecasts here, but this one contains some interesting numbers about the past decade, so here it is.

“International Phone Traffic Growth Slows, while Skype Accelerates” – A blurb of a report from Telegeography (you need to buy the complete report).

“Evolution of Storage” (via Bob) – A nice visualization of how far we have gone in terms of storage for music, photos, and data.

“Report: 44% Of Google News Visitors Scan Headlines, Don’t Click Through” (via Tech.Blorge) – I think the title speaks for itself; it is an interesting observation in light of all these debates about the relationships between the “old” and the “new” media.

“Heritage Foundation: Index of Economic Freedom 2010” (via @infopolicy) – I have not read the entire analysis in depth, but I think there is not much revolutionary in it; what I found particularly valuable is that they make their dataset publicly available.

Some location-specific stats:

• Asia – Mobile broadband
• Belarus – Twitter usage (in Russian)
• Russia – Search queries
• South Africa – Internet penetration
• Switzerland – Broadband
• USA – Broadband speed
• USA – Seniors online

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

I think many have heard about Apple and AT&T not allowing VoIP in their environment and about the broad criticism of this move.  So, it was interesting to see some alternative views as well: “The iPhone & the Lack of Voice Over 3G: Alternative Theory” and “More level headed analysis of VoIP over 3G“.  Unfortunately I don’t think I have enough technical knowledge to judge these stands, so I would love to hear from those of you who can do that.

“Large databases can never be secure” – An opinion article from Guardian, which is particularly interesting to me in light of the biometric database debates in Israel.

Tarleton pointed out an interesting discussion about “digital collectivism.”  On the one hand we have Jarod Lanier who, in clearly a PR act for his forthcoming book, makes an argument against web 2.0-ish digital collectivism.  On the other hand, we have Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and now Hatch, defending the collaborative spirits of netizens while making a plug for her companies.

Speaking of Tarleton, he just gave an interesting talk at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society on the “politics of platforms“.

“The Future of Communication: Theory and Methodology?” (via @JamesShanahan) – Dietram Scheufele shares some thoughts about the field of communication at the crossroads raising more questions than providing answers, as its title may suggest.  What do you think?

Digital Divide

“Framing the Digital Divide in Higher Education” – Ismael Peña-López publishes a monograph summarizing some recent thought on the digital divide.  I have not read the entire thing, but it seems like an interesting read.

MICT regulation

“Hungary introduces mandatory open standards for public institutions” – I think this is interesting and also important development for encouraging competition in the MICT industry and accessibility to information.

MICT business

“The New York Times to start charging for online content, again – this time, metered” – I am sure there will be much more information about this as the implementation time approaches, but the move itself is interesting.  Here is Guardian further speculating about what it may look like: “How will a New York Times paywall work?“

“Rock Band opens to user-created songs” – This is quite an interesting move in the 2.0-ish direction.  I wonder if it will take off.

“New” media

“Environmental impact of media” (via @JamesShanahan RT @mediatwit) – An interesting conversation about the environmental impact of “old” mass media vs. “new” mass media, specifically print vs. digital; the overall gist is that print can be actually more environmentally friendly compared to the digital publishing.

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“Lego router” (via Sean) – A guy built a case for Linksys router out of Lego.  He also built a computer case in a similar way.  It all is probably useless, but really cool.

“The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures” – If you are in the online dating scene, this may actually be useful.

“Linux-powered digital guitar with touch screen interface” – MAKE magazine has some really cool projects published on their blog.  I think this one is a nice example:

And finally, a tribute to Veronica:

:)

Recent news related

It has been a while since the IGF in Sharm el-Sheikh and the preparations for the next meeting are already under way, but the reflections on what happened in Egypt and on the process itself, keep pouring in.  Here is a brief collection:

“ENDitorial: IGF 2009: the Forum is the Message (and the Massage as well)” (via Information Policy) – The European Digital Rights group reflects on the IGF process, playing off McLuhan’s “the medium is the  message.”  This is more of a summary of the event from a particular EDRI’s perspective.

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“Free to invest: The Economic Benefits of Preserving Net Neutrality” (via @isocny) – NYU Law School’s Institute for Policy Integritty issues a report that discusses some of the central questions that are raised by the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules.

“Report: Over 97% Of November Email Was Spam” – An article summing up the volumes of contemporary spam and what it is comprised off.

“How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers” – Quite an interesting attempt to quantify the amount of information people in the US consume on a yearly basis.  The numbers are actually about 2008.  For example it states that in 2008 “Americans consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day. Consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day. A zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power bytes, a million million gigabytes.”

“70% of online users in the UAE feel virtual interaction is slowly replacing personal contact” (via Twitter) – Usually we hear about survey results from the West, particularly from the US, here is a rare occasion to see how people in the MENA region perceive the World Wide Web.  We have to keep in mind that the data in this study was collected through an online survey and it is not 100% clear what the sampling and other methodological aspects were, but nevertheless it is a peek into how those who use the Internet in MENA think about it and its social functions.

“Social Networking Usage and Grades Among College Students” (via Insied Higher Ed) – Another study demystifying a not-so-old claim about a correlation between students’ grades and their usage of Facebook.  Among other findings, they show that business school students are making the most use of blogging and micro-blogging – interesting.

“Study on the Costs of DNSSEC Deployment” – There was a lot announced during last year in terms of changes to the Internet infrastructure; this is a study by the European Network and Information Security Agency assessing the cost of deployment of the domain name system security extension.

“Facebook usage statistics by country – Dec 31st 2009” – I am not 100% sure about the sources of data, but it is interesting.

It is also that time of the year when everybody is summarizing the last year (in many cases trying to anticipate the next one), so here are some interesting reports.

“Information Society Statistical Profiles 2009: Europe” (via @ictlogist) – An ITU report with some current ICT stats about the European countries.

“Information Society Statistical Profiles 2009: Africa” (via @rebekahredux and WhiteAfrican) – Another part of the ITU, but this time with some current ICT stats about the African countries.

Similar reports can be also found for the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, and CIS.

“Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2009” (via @ictlogist) – A rather detailed report from the OECD trying to tackle “matters relating to innovation, science, technology and globalisation”.

And some country specific stats:

• India – IT sector;
• India – Internet on Mobile;

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

“On The Berkman School of Thought“ – Tim Hwang is playing with an idea of identifying “schools of thought” in the internet-related studies; I think this is an interesting and thought provoking exercise, especially now, when there is a debate emerging around the question of whether there should be a field of “internet studies” or internet-related scholarship is dealt with adequately in other disciplines.  Any thoughts on the subject are welcome here or on Tim’s blog.

“What Do You Own? ‘iSlate’ and Apple’s Direction” – Dan Gilmor is pondering whether Apple is stretching it with creating walled gardens with its new hardware (from iPhone to iSlate).  What do you think about this?

“Techno-utopian fail” – Evgeny Morozov shares some thoughts about observations about an utopic view of the link between MICT and promotion of democracy in oppressive regimes.  What do you think about this?

“Web 2.0 Suicide Machine” – A website that allows you to eliminate yourself from various social networks without an option to restore your profile back;  their explanation is that going offline allows you to take your physical life back; although the means may be a bit extreme, people seem to respond so well that Facebook decided to block them.

Digital Divide

“Mobile technology, gender and development in Africa, India and Bangladesh” – This is a project to watch, as it will start only in 2010 and will last for three years.  The link contains a description of the project and a bit of background about the current situation.

“XO-3 Concept Designs are Here!” – Yes, the OLPC has announced the concept for the next generation of XOs; they decided to skip XO-2 and focus on XO-1.5 and XO-1.75 (which sounds interesting) before they jump to an entirely new generation.  The new design looks fancy, but it reminds me more of a sophisticated reader combined with some iPhone functionality rather than a computer.  Moreover, it looks rather fragile on the pictures.  Having said that, it is intriguing and it is supposed to below the $100 mark.  But we will have to wait until 2012 to see it on the market (if everything goes as planned).

MICT regulation

“France considering “Google tax” to support dying media” (via @rafik)  – The French government is proposing to tax online advertising – what do you think about that?

“Handbook Media regulation and self-regulation in the Post-Soviet space” (via @infopolicy) – A report from a UNESCO supported seminar on the subject that took place in Belarus in May 2009.

“Russians Wary of Cyrillic Web Domains” – One of the first articles tackling the issue of International Domain Names.  I believe we will see more of them in the not too distant future and I think this is an interesting and an important discussion to have and a valuable domain for research.

“Who is scared of Russian?” – Andrei Kolesnikov, Director of the Coordination Center for Russia’s Top Level Domain .RU responds to the NYT article.

“Security and Non-Latin Domain Name Characters” – The PC Mag blog is pondering about issues of security and phishing.  More on phishing and unicode here – “Can IDN Usage Open a Can of Unicode Worms?“.

“Domain Name Registry-Registrar Vertical Separation” – A really interesting (long) and detailed article on the issues of cross-ownership of registries (wholesale) and registrars (retail) in the domain name industry; I am getting really interested in this stuff.

MICT business

“Twitter Profitable from $25M in Search Deals with Google, Microsoft” (via @mkhatib7) and “Content-Search Deals Make Twitter Profitable” – As it turns out, Twitter is profitable and it profits from allowing Google and MS to mine their data (our Twits).  That is a really interesting development…

MICT and politics

“MPs Online: Connecting with Constituents” (via techPresident) – A report about British MPs’ perceptions of the Internet; not surprising, but interesting.

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

Dilbert is as usual right on spot – this time it is about the Web 2.0 publishing:

And finally, some robotic fun (thanks to Lisa and Veronica):

Robotic fish

Robotic swimming snake (in Japanese)

As always, thoughts, comments, and reflections are welcome and highly appreciated!

Recent news related

I guess until the actual Internet Governance Forum will take place, there will be a lot of local events and news associated with them.  Here, for example, is a summary of the IGF USA that took place on October 2 in DC and here is the Internet Governance Project’s summary of the event – “IGF-USA plenary voices support for global Internet Governance Forum process“.

Also, ICANN is gearing up for its board meeting in Seoul in the end of October.  There has been so much going on, that they even published a guide to their recent activity, which is really great in terms of reaching out to the public.  For example they released application guidebook for new top level domain names (gTLDs) and an application plan for the international domain names (domain names in non-Latin characters).  Here is one response to these developments and here is another really interesting conversation (you have to read the comments to get the full value out of it).  I guess there will be more coming, especially when criticism is already starting to pour in.  There is a nice article on CircleID summarizing the first 100 days of the new president of ICANN and also give a good overview of its activities.

And of course, there are responses keep on pouring to the recent AoC announcement between ICANN and the Department of Commerce.  Some of those are super positive and enthusiastic.  Andrew Mack of AMGlobal Consulting claims that: “ICANN’s Positive Affirmation: Good News for Africa and Emerging Markets.”  He is so excited that I am not sure I completely follow all his arguments in the post (but then I must be missing something).  Steve DelBianco, who states that he has originally supported extension of the Joint Project Agreement, is also pleased with the new arrangement and you can read about it here – “ICANN’s September Surprise.”  I think that such enthusiasm can be partially explained by the fact that both Mack and DelBianco are consultants who are doing ICANN related work.

There are also some more critical voices being heard.  For example, Anja Kovacs asks in the Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) community – “The ICANN-US DOC ‘Affirmation of Commitments’ – A Step Forward?” – and then gives an answer, which ticks ICANN off, “no.”  I think while she makes some valid points, she is also overlooking some practical limitations such as the current landscape of the internet industry.  Avri Doria is also voicing a concern in her post – “Post JPA – tempered happiness” – which makes a point similar to mine – while the US control is at least nominally relinquished, the overall government control has nominally increased and not all the stakeholders are particularly happy about that. Multistakeholderism is a tough philosophy and I do not envy ICANN leadership.

The commercial players are also responding.  Jeremy Rabkin and Jeffrey Eisenach published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled: “The U.S. Abandons the Internet,” where they claim that the US has left the Internet and the industry that relies on it at the mercy of the UN and international politics (Eisenach represents Verisign, which helps to place things in perspective; update: Verisign sent a letter of support of the ICANN’s decision as a reply to that op-ed).  Lynn St.Amour of ISOC published a laconic reply titled: “U.S. Not Abandoning Internet Role.”

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“The Next Generation Connectivity” – A really comprehensive report form the Berkman Center on the state of the broadband; FCC is now also seeking comments on the report.  And here is also a follow up interview with Yochai Benkler, the PI of the report.

“In Rural Africa, a Fertile Market for Mobile Phones” (via @rebekahredux) – A NY Times article about mobile adoption in Africa.  Seems like a continuation of the Economist report on telecom in developing countries that got published last week.

“State of the Internet” – An interactive report from Akamai (also available in PDF).  And there is also a forthcoming “Two-Year Study of Global Internet Traffic” by the Arbor Networks, the University of Michigan and Merit Network (via ISOC-NY).

“State of the blogosphere” – Technorati is publishing a new report and PEW release a report about Twitter – “Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009“.

“The World in 2009: ICT Facts and Figures” – A very brief pamphlet from the recent ITU Telecom 2009, showing some basic stats about the state of the ICT globally.

“From Twitter to MySpace, social networks are now run by women over 35” (via @rmack) – A Times article full of anecdotes and stats about what proportion of social media users are women and how they use those applications.

And only one country update this time:

• Nigeria – telecom investment;

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

FCC held a meeting to discuss the US national broadband plan at end of September.  The video of the entire meeting and a bunch of other media and documents, are available here.

“What future for ICT4D?” (via Twitter) – An interesting compilation of various blogs and talks discussing the idea of ICT for development.  While the post highlights some rather obvious points, which have been discussed by social scientists for at least a decade, it also brings in interesting and different perspectives.  One thought that it has triggered in me is that I have yet heard about socially-responsible marketing, which may emerge as an issue in the near future.

“The Day It All Changed” (via @OLPC) – “Follow the Reader” reports on a demonstration by the Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle of the Book Server project that gives access to 1.6 million books on a variety of devices (including the XO laptops).  There are also some interesting numbers in that report, such as that 20% in libraries worldwide are in public domain.  Really interesting.

Digital Divide

“Hi-tech teacher at their little fingertips” (via @OLPC) – OLPC goes to Sri Lanka.  The Sri-Lankan government with the support of the World Bank is going to spend over quarter million US dollars on running an XO-based program in 13 remote schools, reaching 1040-1300 kids (US $200-251 per child).  It will be interesting to follow this up and to learn more details.  We already know that the laptops are localized, but there is nothing in the article about the investment in training of the teachers and tech support.

On a related note, the Economist writes – “Laptops for all” (via @OLPC) – an article reviewing the OLPC deployment in Uruguay, which I think is the flagship of OLPC deployments so far.  There are around 380K laptops currently in Uruguay in the hands of primary school children (at the cost of US $260 per laptop + $21 yearly maintenance).  The program is very popular, but there are difficulties in terms of connectivity and technical literacy of the teachers.  We will have to wait to see the assessment of its impact.

“Bold Rwanda takes broadband leap” (via @OLPC) – A BBC article about the Rwandan efforts of improving their connectivity.  And here is another article, showing the complexity of bringing connectivity to Africa (via Twitter) – “With the cables now in Uganda, what next?“.

“Apple Opens Shop In Ghana” (via Twtter) – I was not sure about adding this item here, but it is too surrealistic not to share.  I am not completely sure why they are doing this other than PR, but Apple with its overpriced products (sorry, they are overpriced) is opening a store in a country with GDP per capita of $2,700 (in 2006) does not make much sense at this point.  What are they trying to achieve?

“Amazon goes global. Sort of” (via @evgenymorozov) – Another interesting developments in which Amazon reveals its intentions to sell a simpler version of Kindle outside of the US.  I think there is actually potential for such device, after all one of the main arguments of OLPC is that they are making books accessible everywhere.  We’ll have to see how it works out, by Evgeny is skeptical.

“$10 billion takes fiber to every school, hospital in the US” (via Twitter) – The Gates Foundation met with the FCC to discuss an idea of “running fiber optic cables to every ‘anchor institution’ in the US—libraries, hospitals, community colleges, public schools.”  Back in the day Google also talked about investment in infrastructure – I wonder where do they stand on that now.

“Broadband Mapping: Treasure for a New Age” – A sort of related article on the economics and politics of broadband mapping in the US.

MICT regulation

“Soon, Bloggers Must Give Full Disclosure” (via @paddycosgrave and @lisa_dp) – Starting on December 1, buzz creators in the “new” media will have to disclose ties to companies whose products they are buzzing.  I think this is a logical development, but unlike the author of the article, I am not sure how much difference it will make to this segment of the industry.  What do you think?

There was a lot of buzz about Finland being the first government to make broadband a legal right of its citizens; it was not clear to me what exactly it means until I read this press release from the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communication – “Access to a minimum of 1 Mbit Internet connection available to everyone in Finland by July 2010.”

“New” media

“#beatcancer” (via Twitter) – This is an interesting social media experiment, which I think kind of failed.  The idea was to raise money for cancer research utilizing the “power” of social media.  For a period of 24 hours every mention of #beatcancer would result in a 1 penny donation towards the cause by Ebay/Paypal and MillerCoors Brewing Company.  The organizers also hoped to set a Guinness record for for the distribution of the largest mass message through social media” (more here).  The idea is really interesting, because unlike in the case with chain letters a few years ago, this is actually workable, because one can trace the mentions.  But I think the experiment failed on both fronts.  First, I got the message through Twitter a day after the campaign was over.  At that point, the website showed 208620 mentions of the hashtag, which is relatively low in terms of reach of a viral campaign and a drop in the sea in its monetary equivalent.  Nevertheless, as of at least 7 hours later, people kept retweeting the hashtag and calling others to do the same.  Weird.  Food for thought I guess…

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“The French Get Lost in the Clouds Over a New Term in the Internet Age” (via @evgenymorozov) – I am sure that French are not alone.  Just a few years ago we’ve encountered a similar problem with Arabic and now I am trying to think about Hebrew terms for the Internet Governance jargon – it is challenging.

“ICANN GNSO Acronym Helper” (via @RodBeckstrom) – For anyone trying to figure out the world of Internet Governance or telecom policy broader defined, acronyms are the first line of barriers to entry; this website helps at least with those acronyms that are related to ICANN.

Wikireader (via Twitter) – This is a small, but promising device that allows you to access 3 million Wikipedia articles on the go without the need for Internet connection.  The device itself is rather practical with a touch screen adopted for outdoors use and really long battery life.  From time to time they also issue updates for the content and I wonder if it is possible to see the history of the article and the discussions (does not look like it from the video below).  There was something weird about it on Amazon though, because it was available there at one point, but then it disappeared and the note there reads: “We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock”.  Strange.

So, should I continue with these?

Recent news related

One of the biggest recent news in the domain of this site was the new agreement between the US Government and ICANN.  I wrote about it before and here is a collection of other reactions (blogs and media) on this announcement.

“ICANN, Dept. of Commerce sign historic agreement” (via @RodBeckstorm) – A conversation with Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s CEO, at Federal News Radio; the hosts expressed a lot of naivety/lack of knowledge on the subject matter or that was they way to be really nice to Rod.

“France Statement” (via IGP; French here) – The French Government has issues a response to the Affirmation of Commitments applauding the new agreement; one point that stood out to me is that they emphasize the need “to enhance the role of governments in the current Internet governance mechanisms, and particularly within ICANN” – I wonder what role do they actually envision for the governments and what does the technical community think about this.

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“A special report on telecoms in emerging markets” – The Economist is doing a good job presenting the various aspects of the phenomenon with a clear message that mobile is the king.

“What to Measure? Only 16% of the Web Is Clicking Display Ads” (via Twitter) – The online advertisers are looking for alternative ways of measuring effectiveness of online ads.  What would you measure?

“Global Broadband Quality Study” – The Oxford Business School releases its second report on the quality of broadband worldwide; overall there is better connectivity, but the inequalities persist.

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

“Is Online Privacy a Generational Issue?” (via Twitter) – A Wired article raising the question of generational differences in perceptions of privacy.

“The rise of telecom diplomacy” (@evgenymorozov) – Evgeny Morozov notes in Foreign Policy that he has spotted some links between telecom investments and diplomacy in the case of Russian investments in Nicaragua and potentially Venezuela; while interesting I wonder if he is not reading too much into and I am curios about the proportion of telecom in the international trade between Russia and those countries; it seems more reasonable to me that the telecom investments are only part of package, but not the only component.  What do you think?

“Under the Influence: Chinese Colonialism Works Without Ideas” – More of a book review of “China’s Safari: On the Trail of Beijing’s Expansion in Africa,” from World Politics Review; I found it thought provoking; the key idea is probably: “Unlike the Americans, with their sermons on free markets and good governance, or the imperial British before them, the Chinese come bearing little else than the pursuit of profit. In a sense, it’s leave your ideology at the door.”.  The article is behind a pay-wall, but you can register for 4 months trial period.

Digital Divide

“Cuban post offices OK’d for Internet access” – We don’t hear much about internet on Cuba, so this is interesting (and I hope not to get sued for referring to an AP article).

Talking about internet access, here is a really smart conversation between David Weinberg and John Horrigan, the authors of numerous reports from the PEW Internet and American Life project (via Diplo IG community):

“Can a laptop change the world?” – A BBC review of the OLPC project, drawing a beautiful picture of its ups and downs and trying to get at the idea of their education philosophy.  And on the same subject, the Telegraph has run a long story on OLPC in Rwanda – “One laptop per child” – the only thing I could not figure is the subtitle of that article, which claimed that “One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) movement have become key factors in Rwanda’s economic growth” without providing any evidence for that in the body of the article itself… weird.

MICT regulation

“FCC Endorses Network Neutrality” – Another break in the discussion about Net Neutrality in the US.   You can also listen to Siva Vaidhyanathan discussing this development.

MICT business

“Twitter.org?” – Bo Peabody’s op-ed in Washington post questioning applicability of advertising as a the main business model for social media.  The core of the argument is that social media/networks are not media business, but communication business, and as such require a different approach.  Ethan Zukerman published a very thoughtful response to this article in his blog – “Twitter.org? and building models for social media“.

MICT and politics

“China Yearns to Form Its Own Media Empires” (via Twitter) – This is actually a rather interesting development and it is clearly labeled as a “soft power” diplomatic effort; i like this complexity of politics, business and diplomacy.

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“Teen’s DIY Energy Hacking Gives African Village New Hope” (via @OLPC) – A pretty amazing and inspiring story of William Kamkwamba from a village in Malawi, who on his own learned how to build windmills and generate electricity for his family and more; today he has a lot of support (and PR) behind him and there is a book coming out.  Here is a video with his story:

Equally cool is this new gyrowheel, which can totally change the experience of learning riding a bike.  Thank you, Veronica, for the video!

Recently I started playing with Twitter, which turned out to be a good source of interesting information.  However, many times there is a gap between the time I open a link posted on Twitter and the time I actually read the item and add it to the digest.  As a result, I think a number of items here are missing attribution.  Not sure how I am going to deal with it, but if you have any ideas, please share.  In the meantime, I just put “via Twitter” by those posts.

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“OECD Communications Outlook 2009” – A new report was recently released by OECD and it is accessible online.

“In the blogosphere, Afghanistan emerges as a hot topic” (via Twitter) – A report from the PEW Excellence in Journalism project looking at the content of the blogosphere; pretty interesting and I wonder if they would keep up with it on a regular basis.

“Government Sites Serve 42% of Online Americans” (via Twitter) – Some stats about how Americans interact with the numerous website the new administration has set up.

“Nigerian scams evolve, but motive still money” (via @evgenymorozov) – A Chicago Tribune article surveying how the original “Nigerian” scam has evolved playing off Western arrogance and highlighting that online tacit knowledge is probably as important as skill (or maybe even more important).

“Where Google Is Really Big: India and Brazil” (via @evgenymorozov) – On average around the globe people spend 9.4% of their online time on one of the Google’s services; in Brazil it is 30% and in India it is 29% (note how they got the URL wrong – China, Brazil… what’s the difference).

Some country specific info:

• Australia – Mobile broadband
• Nigeria – Mobile market.
• Slovenia – Telecom market regulation.
• Solomon islands – Telecom market.
• South Korea – Telecom market.
• Uganda – Telecom market.

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

“As Internet Turns 40, Barriers Threaten Its Growth” – Usually we hear about the opportunities or the threats stemming from the wide adoption of the internet; this article is about the threats and challenges that the medium itself is facing.  Here is another opinion on the same occasion – “Happy Birthday, Internet!”

Digital Divide

“Corruption adds to African IT costs, insiders say” – Something that is rarely mentioned in the debates about the digital divide.

MICT regulation

“Access and the Internet” (via Information Policy) – An editorial in NY Times; is net neutrality becoming another face of the digital divide?

“Govt may block all Internet telephony services” (via Twitter) – This article is about India; when it happened in Russia, the analysts agreed that it was a government move to assist the local telcos and the security argument was just an excuse; no such argument here.

“US Broadband stimulus package” – Good and accessible analysis of the US broadband stimulus package.

“Microsoft pushes for single global patent system” (via @evgenymorozov) – I think the title is descriptive enough and I wonder if this is a beginning of a trend regarding issues that are inherently global, like the internet.

“‘Social control’ better than legislation” – The point is interesting as is the example from Philippines.

“Israeli bloggers trying to wrest control of ’secretive’ Web group” (via @guysoft) – Thanks to Guy for bringing this entire issue to my attention and supplying me with a constant flow of link; this is the first of what I think will be a number of articles on the subject and although this one is not the deepest one, it does present the issue.

ICANN public comment – I think ICANN has launched a new forum platform for public consultations.

MICT business

“Yahoo! makes a big move in the Middle East – buys Maktoob” – Yahoo! follows Goolge and expands into the Arabic language internet; an analysis.

“Electronics Reach Out to the Ends of the Age Spectrum” – I think this is quite a logical step; the next one could be greater emphasis on developing countries.

“300 Million and On” – Mark Zuckerberg’s post about Facebook reaching 300 million users, but most interestingly it now has positive cash flow.

“New” media

“Games lessons” – A short piece from the Economist discussing the use of computer games in education.

“Technorati To Start Competing with Bloggers” – I am not sure I would subscribe to the title, but this item is about the next move of Technorati, which is trying to formulate a business model on the platform it has created.  I am not sure I necessarily see the competition with bloggers component, but it is too soon to tell.  In the meantime you may want to take part in Technorati’s survey of bloggers.

MICT and politics

“Russia: Medvedev launches YouTube channel” – I wrote before about Medvedev adopting some technologies even before the technologically-savvy President Obama; this time he is a latecomer.

“Democracy 2.0 Awaits an Upgrade” (via Twitter) – a nice article from NY Time that presents the two opposing opinions on technology and democracy.

www.presidentassad.net (via @jilliancyork) – Syrian “President of Just & Comprehensive Peace” is trying to follow the footsteps of Obama and Medvedev by setting up a website.  Not sure how new it is, but I wonder if it is another face of the digital divide.

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

If you are into building websites, here is a short explanation of the basic principles :)

In fact, it seems like this guy has realy found himself a niche.  Check out this video on social media and this one on paid search… :)

And if you are feeling nostalgic, take a look at – “The FSA and the Dawn of Kodachrome” – for a set of old color photos capturing the US in early 20th century.

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.

Digital Divide

“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.

MICT regulation

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.

MICT business

“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.

“New” media

“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?

MICT and politics

“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: