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)