Freedom of expression hindered in Saudi Arabia
December 30, 2007
Fouad Alfarhan, a leading Saudi blogger, one of the few to use his real name when commenting on political and social issues, was arrested on December 10. He had since been held imprisoned, for questioning, reports Global Voices Online.
Fouad had sent an email to his friends, prior to his arrest, asking to make the email public if he rests “forgotten in jail.” He had been warned by an official from the Ministry of Interior that he would be subject to investigation. Fouad wrote, he had been previously asked to apologize, to be cleared of all potential charges. “I am not sure if I am ready to do that. Apology for what?” he wrote in an email.
“It’s really sad to see a blogger arrested and silenced for exercising his freedom of speech to condemn terrorism and promote political reform in his country,” said Sami Ben Gharbia, director of Global Voices.
Fouad runs a blog “Alfarhan.org” where he openly calls for reforms and harshly condemns terrorism. He had been forced by authorities to halt for a few months blogging activity.
Picture: Global Voices Online
Human bodies to accommodate nano-physicians
December 22, 2007
For those who remember Asimov’s “Fantastic Voyage” the news of nanotravels possibilities inside human bodies should come as old news. For the rest, Roland Piquepaille, on his Emerging Technology Trends blog, elaborates on the use of nanorobots to travel inside human bodies, diagnosing disease and delivering the needed drugs.
“The idea of using nanorobots to deliver drugs and fight diseases such as cancers is not new,” Piquepaille writes. “But there are still lots of issues to solve before nanorobots can diagnose our diseases and treat them.”
Now the use of nanorobots can be tested on a software and hardware platform, designed specifically for these matters by an international team of experts. The researchers expect an operational prototype, which will be able to integrate “nanobioelectronics and proteomics” to travel through human body and be of real medical help, to be ready by 2015. Mass commercialization would be pushed back a bit more, allowing for safety testing.
Picture: Adriano Cavalcanti and colleagues
ComicWonder Looks to Bring Back Joke Telling the User-Generated Way
December 20, 2007
ComicWonder is a newly launched user-generated joke site, where members can record their own jokes and then share them via embeddable widgets on blogs, web pages, and social networking sites, writes Adam Ostrow on Mashable.Com. Each joke has its own page where one can listen to it, add it to favorites, rate it, leave comments, tag it or get the embed code to paste it elsewhere. To record a joke on ComicWonder, visitors tell the site their phone number and the system will call you and guide you through recording.
ComicWonder has been in private beta for several months and concurrent with their public launch, has initiated a contest to find “the best joke teller on the planet.” The prize is a shirt engraved with real gold (valued at around $1,000), plus $2500 cash.
New York Times to Run Amateur News Videos
December 19, 2007
The New York Times is planning to run “citizen” videos about the US presidential primary elections on the paper’s web site, writes Josh Catone on ReadWriteWeb. The videos will feature non-professional journalists and will run on the Op-Ed section of the site until February 5.
AOL launches Hot Seat, a syndicated political widget
December 19, 2007
AOL has launched Hot Seat, a syndicated online political widget on AOL News. Hot Seat features daily political poll questions from some of the biggest political bloggers on the Internet in order to stimulate a dialogue between voters, pundits and politicians, writes Cristina Ledesma in 901am.
Hot Seat will be displayed on all AOL News, Elections and Political Machine pages as well as participating sites outside the AOL network. The Hot Seat widget showcases real-time poll question results on both a national and state-by-state level, while letting users share and discuss their views with users of various sites.
Doubling Internet population – what next billion users might bring
December 19, 2007
As the world enters the second-billion-Internet-users phase, it should prepare itself for changes that this increase in online population would bring, Michael Geist writes on his webpage. The issues of booming Internet population were widely discussed during the second annual Internet Governance Forum last month, Michael says.
The new billion will reshape the internet, to suit their language, cultural and financial particularities, as they, in their vast majority, will most probably come from the developing world.
The global network will have to adapt itself to the demands of the next-decade users. As broadband might be less popular among the new users, out of financial reasons, the Internet services will have to adjust their offers. And the hardware manufacturers – come up with apparel that would fit the pockets of the newly-webs.
Picture: Flickr
SMS activism in non-profit sector – helped by free FrontlineSMS
December 19, 2007
Kenny B advertises FrontlineSMS as the first free mobile short-messaging solution designed specifically for non-profits, on his “Build it Kenny and they will come …” blog. The software allows NGOs to announce their events, conduct awareness campaigns, monitor elections, and many other, the author writes.
This software allows various integration solution, including such functions as export to Excel and management of all the actions required via a PC, without the need to be permanently online. It would send SMS to selected people, groups of people, and it allows to engage with contacts to conduct surveys, competitions and other - through integrated managers.
Kenny B plotted on a map the use of FrontlineSMS throughout the world, and the needs the software has been serving, since its launch two years ago. “The totals,” he writes, “areimpressive.”
Picture: FrontlineSMS
New media challenge the directing of education
December 17, 2007
George Siemens sees a potential threat in having learners shape the how and what of the educational process, on his Connectivism blog. Given the fifth-estate nature of Internet, wikis, and podcasts, the young seem to be grabbing the reins of educational directing.
Without denying the legitimate services and accomplishments of new social media and their impact on modern education, Siemens fears the escape of the future from the traditions of the past.
Yet, he questions the ability of the learners to inherit and build on the accomplishments of the past. “It comes down to trust. Do we trust our students have the same desire for a better world that we, and every generation before us, has had? Do we trust in human ingenuity? Do we trust in the human spirit to rise up in the face of vileness, oppression, and moral weakness?”
Picture: Flickr
Nielsen Online releases Top 10 U.S. Social-Network and Blog Site Rankings for November
December 17, 2007
According to the latest custom report of Nielsen Online, MySpace and Blogger.com are still the leading social networking site and blogging platform, respectively, writes Leo Blanco on 901am.
Facebook remains one of the fastest growing social networking sites with 89% growth compared to the same month last year. Classmates Online, AOL Hometown, Reunion.com, AOL Community continue to decline at different paces.
This scenario is similar with blogging platforms. Blogger.com is the leader with 49% growth. The challenger, WordPRess demonstrated the fastest growth in the industry with 310%. It has retained the number 2 spot for 2nd month now.
Google to dominate internet knowledge disseminations?
December 14, 2007
Google aims at combinging the better sides of Wikipedia, about, and Mahala, to name a few of online knowledge-dissemination services, writes PG on Personomies.com.
The new services, recently announced by Google, the knolt, will give the e-authors what they’ve been lacking so far: credit.
Google’s approach will be to have a world-wide team of experts who would submit writings on specific topics, would get peer-reviewed and edited by the whole online community, and rated, using crowd-wisdom, the author writes. All this – keeping the name, picture and references of the original author.
The Google giant seems to be aiming at wide, source-backed dissemination of knowledge, intending the knolt as the first search hit on its subject. Google promises to prioritize the competing knolts, as it claims competition would only benefit the subject, based on a rating system. The more good marks the merrier.
With credited authors, thousands of edits and peer reviews and mass rating, Google seems to be leading a yet another breakthrough in Internet knowledge dissemination.
Picture: Googleblog