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.

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:

:)