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.