My dad sent me a link to a documentary about one such person, Felix Zandman (in the picture).  I have never heard about him before, even though most of my gadgets, and in fact the field of my studies, owe quite a lot to his talent.  If you are using a laptop, a mobile phone, a digital camera or any other piece of electronics, most probably you are enjoying fruits of his work.  Zandman, who is one of the only six recipients of  Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Electronic Distributors Association (and a “few” other awards), is the founder of Vishay Intertechnology – one of the world’s largest manufacturers of discrete semiconductors and passive electronic components.  In fact, many of the innovations in the sphere of minimization of electronic components came from Zandman’s ideas, which I think is amazing.

Even more amazing in my view is Zandmand’s personal story.  His entire family, except for one uncle, was killed in the Holocaust.  He survived through a series of coincidences (or miracles if you want), human compassion, and living in a hole (literally) with 3 (and then 4) more people for 17 months.  He came out of that war with nothing and ended up building a Fortune 1000 company and creating technology that touches lives of billions of people.  I find his personal story truly amazing and inspiring, and my attempt to abbreviate it here does not do it much justice.

If you have an hour to spare, I encourage you to watch the entire documentary.  Someone uploaded it on 56.com (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 – warning: it’s really slow, you need to let it buffer for a while to watch it smoothly) and the first 20 minutes or so are also available on YouTube (part 1, part 2) – all with English subtitles and narration.  Most of what I know about the story of Felix Zandman at this point is from this documentary (the online materials are scarce), but it really got me interested in his personality and now I also intend to read his memoirs, Never The Last Journey.

One presentation that caught my attention was by Andrey Kolesnikov from the Russian Coordination Centre for TLD.ru, which he gave in a session on internationlized domain names (PDF).  It caught my attention because I got recently interested in the debate surrounding this topic and hoped to learn about how things are going in countries that have already applied for a localized top level domains (other presenters on the panel were from Egypt and China). There is only so much one can learn from just looking at PPT slides, but here is an attempt.

Russia is the only country I know of that has already auctioned localized domain names, even though the approval of the top level domain in Cyrillic is still in the works.   As such, Kolesnikov was in a position to shed some light on the actual demand for localized domain names, as opposed to arguments about their great potential.  And if I read his slides correctly, I think he did.  Here is what he has to show:

The early registration process, or the “sunrise” period, is still going on, but these numbers are interesting.   There are currently over 369K domain names registered in Russia and according to Coordination Centre for TLD.ru, there are over 2.6 million domains registered under the .ru top level domain (RU).  In other words. we can see that the trademark holders and Russian domainers are either careful with grabbing this opportunity or skeptical of the entire enterprise.  Of course this is a very early stage in the process, but if it is indicative of a trend, than at least in the case of Russia, the skeptics might have a point.  Of course the situation may be different in other parts of the world and in other cultures, but Russian industry does not seem to be too excited.

Am I overanalyzing this?  Am I taking these number out of context?  What do you think?

Third International Workshop on Global Internet Governance: An Interdisciplinary Research Field in Construction

Montreal (QC), Canada – 30-31 May 2010

Organized by GigaNet, in cooperation with The Canadian Communication Association and Media@McGill

Co-sponsored by GigaNet, ACC-CCA, Media@McGill, LIP6/CNRS and UPMC

Preliminary Announcement and Call for Contributions

The Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet) invites you to participate in its third scholarly workshop to be held in Montreal (QC), Canada, on 30-31 May 2010. This workshop is organized in cooperation with the Canadian Communication Association and Media@McGill, during the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS) 2010 Congress week in Montreal.

Building on the success of its first two editions, respectively in Paris, France in June 2008 and in Brussels, Belgium in May 2009, the purpose of this third GigaNet workshop is twofold:

The first day will be dedicated to outreach sessions aimed at increasing the interest in the Global Internet Governance field among both various academic disciplines and the civil society at large, including but not limited to NGOs and civil society groups active in related fields. These outreach sessions will include academic tutorials on Global Internet Governance as well as information and discussion led by experts in the field on current Global Internet Governance debates and their relevance to public policy making.   Detailed information on the outreach sessions’ program will be distributed closer to the event itself.

The second day will feature thematic presentations selected upon submissions made in response to this call for contributions. We invite scholars to present and discuss their work- in-progress in Internet Governance-related research, with the aim to identify emerging research themes and design a research agenda. Rather than featuring academic paper presentations, the workshop aims at providing a survey of current academic activities in the field, in order to share ideas and forge possible collaborations.

Submissions are expected to focus on presenting problematics, research designs, preliminary empirical results and conclusions in the aim of stimulating reflection and discussion amongst the audience. Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

involved actors and their interactions; Internet governance institutions and regimes; legal, socio-economical, behavioral and technical regulation means; Internet governance policy issues.

Submissions in view of thematic presentations should be sent by 20 March 2010 to Meryem Marzouki (Meryem.Marzouki@lip6.fr). They should be written in English and include the name, affiliation, e-mail address and short bio of author(s), along with no more than 500 words of research work description. The program committee will notify applicants by 20 April 2010. To encourage knowledge dissemination, relevant submissions will be published on the workshop website. Authors of selected submissions will be invited to present their work in the workshop thematic sessions.

Program Committee:

Laura DeNardis, Yale U., USA; Meryem Marzouki, CNRS & U. Pierre et Marie Curie, France; Milton Mueller, Syracuse U., USA & Delft Technical U., The Netherlands; Claudia Padovani, Padova U., Italy & McGill U., Canada; Jeremy Shtern, Ryerson U., Canada.

Local Organizing Committee:

Juliana Dalley, McGill U., Canada; Becky Lentz, McGill U., Canada; Daniel Paré, U. of Ottawa, Canada; Claire Roberge, McGill U., Canada.

There is no registration fee for this event. A registration form will be circulated with the program.

Workshop website: http://giga-net.org/page/2010-international-workshop

GigaNet: giga-net.org – ACC-CCA: www.acc-cca.ca – Media@McGill: media.mcgill.ca

To receive further workshop updates, and other GigaNet news, please subscribe to the information dissemination mailing list: info-giganet (http://www-rp.lip6.fr/wws/info/info-giganet)

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.

The Israeli political scene seems to be very disturbed recently.  No, it is not about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is not about Iran, and it is not about about the recent tensions with Syria.  The debate is about a proposal by the government to amend external voting in the law or in other words to allow Israeli citizens abroad to vote in the election (HE).  I’ve heard this idea floating before, but I have never seen such a vibrant debate about this issue, which has recently become very close to my heart.

The situation today is that anybody holding an Israeli passport can vote in the Israeli election, but this person has to be physically present in Israel on the election day.  If you are studying, working, or simply on vacation abroad during the election day, you cannot go to the consulate and vote.  The only people entitled to vote remotely are diplomats and sailors.

The debate is happening on two levels.  On one level, it is a purely political debate, because some believe that the voters living abroad tend to vote to the right and thus the government is pushing for the change of law and the opposition is vigorously opposing it (HE1, HE2, HE3).  On another level, which constitutes most of the rhetoric, the debate is about values – should people who are not living in the country, particularly such country as Israel, be able to decide for those who will actually have to live with the consequences ? (HE1, HE2, HE3, He4, He5, HE6, HE7, HE8)

Some context may help understanding the later facet of the debate better.  Ever since the establishment of the state, people moving to live in Israel were referred to as “olim” or people who are “coming up” to live in and build the country.  On the other hand, people who left Israel to live elsewhere were referred to as “yordim,” meaning people who “stepped down,” left, deserted or abandoned the enterprise of building a Jewish state.  Traditionally, it was completely unacceptable to leave the country.  People who did that, and in fact their entire families, were frowned upon and looked down at.  However, in the past decade or so the criticism softened and in fact Israel is experiencing a brain drain (there are about 500-700K holders of Israeli passports currently living abroad).  The argument of those opposing the law thus resonates with the old sentiment and claims that the people who decided to abandon the not-so-luxurious Israeli realities have no right to decide for those who stayed.  In Israel, they say, election are not just about social issues, which are also important, but they are also about existential topics like war and peace.  If you are not going to live with the consequences of the vote, you shouldn’t have the right to vote, in the first place.  If it is important for you to vote, you can invest in coming to Israel once in four years to do that.

And this is where it is getting personal for me I guess.  It is getting personal because I couldn’t vote in the last election and given the frequency with which elections happen in Israel, I most probably won’t be able to vote in the next one as well.  The issue I am taking with this situation can also be viewed on a couple of level.  First, there is a financial  and logistic concern.  As a student, I simply cannot afford a random visit to Israel.  No matter how much I care about the democracy, the Maslow principles are getting in the way (not to mention the fact that my life is pretty much dictated by the academic calendar).  Second, there is a more substantive argument about my right to influence the reality of my country.  At the end of the day you can take an Israeli out of Israel, but you cannot take Israel completely out of the Israeli.  It starts with the fact that even though I am physically not in Israel at the moment, I am still influenced by the political decisions of its leaders (whether these are some of the taxes I am still paying or protests I encounter on campus, on  street or anywhere else).  But even more that that, as someone currently living abroad on a student visa, I think I should be able to influence the realities I am supposed to come back to upon completion of my studies.  I may decide not to go back to Israel after I finish my PhD, but then it will be a totally different story; right now I don’t have any tools to influence the reality I am supposed to return to, which I think is counterproductive for the country if it wants me back (somewhat related HE).

I may be wrong, but at this point of my life it somehow makes sense (and apparently not just to me – HE1, HE2).  Many of the arguments I read are dismissing any variation of making voting accessible to Israelis living abroad (here is an article in HE stating that 66% of Israelis oppose this idea).  It is “either you are with us or you are against us,” which I find both outdated and counterproductive.  There was a study triggered by this debate, which compared the external voting arrangements in other countries and showed how most of the world has reacted to globalization and to the fact that citizens who live abroad are still citizens of the country (PDF in HE).  In fact, one of the proposed versions of the law is taking a moderate approach that limits the period when one could vote abroad to six years, subject to spending at least 40 days over that period in Israel (HE), but the public discourse neglects the details and focuses on the principle.  This situation is similar to the arrangement in New-Zealand for example.  To be fair, some people do say that students should be given the right to vote (HE), but I think that if such an arrangement will be accepted, let’s say with the conditions similar to what is stated above, it should cover not just the students, but everybody else as well.

I wonder if you have any thoughts on the subject and what the situation is in your country?

What I found particularly interesting about this talk is her attempt to introduce sociological literature into a predominantly legal debate.  Her point of departure is the gap between the rhetoric of law and policy aimed at shaping the information society and the realities on the ground.  For example, she points at the language of economic liberties as fueling the information society governance debate, but at the same time there are laws and regulations that significantly restrict those liberties being that through strong copyright or weak individual privacy protections.  She also highlights that while the policy discourse is usually abstract, the individual’s interpretation of the law and his or her interaction with information and technology is very concrete and situated in a particular physical reality.  Although she focuses on the policy debate in the US, I think her framework can be helpful in thinking about discourse and policymaking elsewhere.

Reaching across the disciplinary isle is not a trivial task and during Cohen’s talk at Berkman it was interesting to see how, during the Q&A, the lawyers in the room took her presentation to different directions from where I think it would go has she been giving her talk in a Communication or an STS departments.  Yet, I think she did a very good job linking the abstract thinking of sociologists about the concrete actions of people to the concrete thinking of the legal scholars about the abstract concepts of the law.  I view it is a part of a very important interdisciplinary dialogue we should have in the field and on purely selfish grounds it helps me to think about communicating the relevance of my dissertation research to the more “hard core” policy debate.

You are invited to watch the talk as well as to read its coverage on Ethan Zuckerman’s, David Weinberger’s, and John Palfrey’s blogs.  In addition, I found a recent paper written by Julie Cohen, which provides an outline of her book (in case you don’t have the time to watch the video).

Enjoy!

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):

• Diplo Foundation Internet Governance Capacity Building Prorgam (deadline: Feb. 12)
• Berkman Center Summer Internship (deadline: March 5)

I was lucky enough to experience both of those opportunities and I am warmly recommend them.

More details and links for each of those opportunities can be found below.

Opportunity 1: Diplo Foundation Internet Capacity Building Program

DiploFoundation is currently accepting applications for the 2010 Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme (IGCBP10). This online programme is designed to improve Internet governance (IG) related knowledge and skills for participants mainly from developing countries and assist them to participate in the global decision-shaping debates on Internet Governance (IG). The Programme also facilitates community building among individuals with different national, cultural, and professional backgrounds.

The deadline for applications is February 12.  More information can be found here.

I went through this program a year ago and I think it is a very good entry point into the internet governance debate and the internet governance community.  Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Opportunity 2: Berkman Center Summer Internship

For 10 weeks each summer The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University swings opens the doors of its big yellow house to welcome a group of talented, curious, and energetic full-time interns who are passionate about the promise of the Internet and issues related to media and journalism, civic engagement, policy, identity and privacy, education, technology, the developing world, law, and more. The interns team up with Berkman projects like Herdict, Cooperation, Digital Natives, Law Lab, Internet & Democracy, or the OpenNet Initiative, where they have an opportunity for deep and substantive involvement in project operation. Performing topic-based research; drafting and editing blog posts, papers and other written outputs; conducting outreach, developing partnerships, and maintaining relationships; exploring project and research design; and undertaking academic responsibilities of all kinds both independently and collaboratively are part of the Berkman summer intern experience. Specific tasks and experiences vary depending on interns’ skills and project needs.

In addition to contributing to project based work, summer interns participate in special events and lectures with Berkman faculty and fellows, engage each other through community experiences like the weekly interns discussion hours, and each year innovate for themselves new opportunities for fun and learning, like organizing debates, producing podcasts and other media outputs, and hosting book clubs and cookoffs (!).

The deadline for applying for this one is March 5.  More information can be found in this link.

As before, if you think i can help you clearing any ambiguities about this opportunity, please feel free to contact me.

Good luck!  And as always, it would be great to hear if anyone manages to take advantage of these opportunities.

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)