 
|
Wikipedia sucks?In his blog, Marcus Gilroy-Ware who has written for openDemocracy about Wikipedia, defends the open source encyclopedia from The Register's Andrew Orlowski. Orlowski's article, "Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems" has been buzzing around the internet propelled by horror that someone could say something so mean about a collaborative success story. "Yes it's garbage," he says, "but it's delivered so much faster!" Admittedly, he makes some good points (you should read it) but not enough to merit such scorn. Like Marcus, I'm left with the sense that Orlowski doesn't quite get it. Has he ever edited a page himself? October 21, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) US forces questioned about journalist killingsOn Sunday, Reuters soundman Waleed Khaled, was killed by five shots fired by US snipers in Iraq. His colleague, cameraman Haidar Kadhem, survived a shot in the back, but has now been detained by American forces without explanation. According to the International Federation of Journalists this brings the number of journalists killed by American troops to 18. And it's caused all the major international freedom of the press organisations, including IFEX, Reporters Without Borders, and the Committe to Protect Journalists to raise questions about not just the killings, but the "wall of silence" they are met with whenever they demand inquiries into their deaths. A statement from the IFJ on Monday says: "The IFJ acknowledges that many of the incidents may have been unavoidable in the context of the war, but in a number of cases there are serious questions still to be dealt with that have given rise to suggestions of deliberate targeting of media staff." It would be nice to know what's going on. Ever since a US missile hit Al Jazeera's offices in Kabul in 2001, it's hard not to suspect the worst. Then again, if you look at the high number of soldiers killed in "friendly fire" or "fratricide" maybe something else entirely is to blame. August 31, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) We media or me media?Welcome to the Evolving Personalised Information Construct. In this eight minute video, what starts as a spoof history of the media in the 20 years since Tim Berners Lee "invented" the World Wide Web, quickly turns into a cautionary tale of the future hegemony of Google and Amazon in the age of we media. Will the democratisation of the news lead to the destruction of the media as a democratic force? Decide for yourself. August 30, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Online input at Young Democrats conventionWhen the The Young Democrats of America, the official youth arm of the Democratic Party in the US held their national convention last week, they accepted online submissions for their new visions platform, and real-time online feedback from the general membership across America using a new technology called the "Online Progressive Congress". The prospects of something like that being used in the "adult" end of the party are pretty interesting. I only just read about it in their newsletter, and haven't found any links to the software/website, but they say it was funded by Garrett Gruener a former candidate for California governor, and one of the main venture capitalists behind the search engine AskJeeves.com. Gruener did most of his campaigning online, but Governor Schwarzenegger was the Terminator. August 11, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) State of the blogosphereThe chief geeks at blog search engine, Technorati have put together a facinating report on global weblog activity - here's part 1 and part 2. Tomorrow, there'll be a part 3. A couple of amazing and inspiring facts from the summary: * Technorati was tracking over 14.2 Million weblogs, and over 1.3 billion links in July 2005 * About 13% of all blogs are updated at least weekly Have you created a blog today? August 4, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) G8 blogs are all the rageAfrica will be high on the agenda at the G8 summit, but who's perspective will we all be getting on it? Panos London will be darned if we don't all hear what Africans have to say about it - and this means Africa too. Because African media often lack the resources to follow international processes and events, they themselves end up falling back on Western media reports, angled entirely wrong for stimulating national debate. Panos have gathered a crew of seasoned African reporters from Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Tanzania, funded their trip to Scotland, and invited them to blog events here: www.panos.org.uk/africavox. Tune in tomorrow. openDemocracy's own G8 blog is heating up here. And yesterday I got a phone call from Seed Magazine, who have launched a culture/science G8 blog here: www.scienceg8.com (nearly ready, give 'em a day). G8 blogs are all the rage. Here are a few more in totally random order: NewsniG8t UPDATE: The Overseas Development Institute in the UK has a G8 blog too: ODI 2005 Blog July 1, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (3) Map of the Creative Commons
From Lawrence Lessig's blog: The countries marked in green are all the places where the Creative Commons exists locally. Yellow is where they are nearly there, and red is where the bug has yet to spread. June 17, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) Hoder: Blogging his way home
I've been an activist of sorts for many years, but never under threats of imprisonment or torture. I can't pretend to know what I would do in his situation. Among others, Anthony Barnett has encouraged him to jump on the plane, and believes "young people must be brave". Now that he has finally decided to go, I quite admire him. Especially because I know he has good reason to be concerned. Another blogger, Mojtaba Saminejad, just received a two year prison sentence. When Hossein was in London, I met with him and his friend Sina Motallebi who was detained for three weeks last year because of his blog. Sina was jokingly telling stories of how his interrogators asked him whether Hossein (aka Hoder) had sent him articles to post in his blog. He responded with a question and asked them, why on earth Hoder would send him articles, when he was more free to write what he wanted in Canada ("and anyway I'm a better writer than him, ho ho"). The next time they interrogated Sina, they accused him of sending articles to Hoder's blog instead. You can say what you want about the effect blogs may or may not have on the politics of the country, but the Iranian government is certainly taking their influence very seriously. In New York, Hossein showed me a scanned handwritten testimony on the internet, that stated Hossein was linking (shock, horror) to subversive and anti-government websites. He thinks someone probably wrote it under force. His website is filtered by the government in Iran. Join me in wishing him luck on his trip, and if you would like to support him with a little cash there is a Paypal donation link on his website. He has promised to blog, photograph and record his entire journey - in his own blog, as well as in the one he helped create right here on openDemocracy - Iran Scan 1384. In return, he asks that if he gets arrested we all blog, report and raise awareness about it as loudly as we can. Photo: Sina Motallebi, his wife, and Hoder in Covent Garden in May. June 11, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) If you were a Chinese blogger, would you tell the government your name?They used to say you can't censor the internet. Will someone please tell the Chinese government? They have announced that all China-based websites and blogs that are not officially registered with the government before 30 June will be shut down and/or fined. Reporters without Borders have sounded alarms. Internet service providers in China who host the websites have been ordered to cooperate. Political bloggers are likely to move their sites to servers outside China, where they unfortunately are easier for the government to "filter" or make inaccessible to Chinese web users through the "Great Firewall". On the Chinese ministry of information website (via the BBC), the reasoning goes:
They will be using software that scans Chinese websites and alerts the authorities if it is not matched with a registration number. Citizenlab describes how it is likely to work. It's best to be skeptical about the counts of how many bloggers have registered so far. Chinese officials say 75%, the Blog Herald reports only 10%. The excellent Global Voices has promised to stay on top of developments, and this post about the anniversary of Tianamen Square gives a sense of the kind of writing at stake. It's been about 10 years since Privacy International published the report Big Brother Incorporated, about how corporations in the developed world assist repressive regimes through the international trade in surveillance technology. And it's still relevant. In May, openDemocracy's Becky Hogge warned about Google's business ties with China, and judging by this recent article on ZDNet about American tech-industry priorities in China, freedom of expression is as good as nonexistent on the agenda compared to software piracy and killing off alternatives to Windows. Of course, it's harder to count human rights breaches in dollars and cents. What's it worth to you? Support the organisations that care. Including openDemocracy, of course. June 7, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) Who's blogging the NY Times?I don't think I've linked to this before. This very cool site is called The Annotated Times and it shows you who is blogging current New York Times articles on a mock Times site. It is mind-boggling to see it displayed this way. Here's a description of how it works. May 12, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Tele-activismHere's a bit more techie-optimism for you. Actually, I think some might call it cyberterrorism. It's a new technology that enables thousands of people to ring the US Senate from their cell phones at the same time. Forget the steady trickle of email and phone calls. Sometimes you need to act fast. People for the American Way are asking supporters to give them their cell phone numbers... At an important tactical moment, minutes before Senators are to vote, the switchboards will begin to implode with calls. I don't think this has ever been done before. The campaign is about saving the filibuster, a legal tactic which enables a minority to stall legislation indefinitely. The Right are keen to get rid of it, because it could prevent "their people" from getting seats in federal and supreme courts. That's the short version of the story. Read more. May 12, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1) NewsmapHere's a neat application that creates a visual, on-the-fly map (in colour) of what the most popular stories are in the Google News Aggregator. Looks very different like this. In the words of the artist, Marcos Weskamp:
Useful, if you want to see what news is making a splash. May 11, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Watch the lobbyistsThe Center for Public Integrity in the US has created a new, free online database that details the names of lobbying companies, which issues they campaign for, and most interestingly, how many dollars they spend to get their opinion through. They call it LobbyWatch and hope journalists will use it to uncover the day to day workings of American politics. This is amazing information to have at your fingertips. In the state of New York, where I live, the the three companies who have spent the most on lobbying are Altria, Verizon and Pfizer (Verizon spent $105,426,174 since 1998). Click on the company names to see a list of the lobbying firms they employ and who else they work for. There is a shocking number of people employed who used to work for Congress or the Federal government. You can play with it yourself or read the summary here. Nationally, the amount of spending has doubled in the past six years. There is nothing illegal about lobbying in America. But when it happens in the dark, it's very hard to hold elected officials accountable. Here's some hard evidence to the saying 'money talks'. Too bad if you don't have any. May 6, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0) FactCheck UKI won't say the BS word anymore. But for those who wish they knew the 'facts' behind UK political rhetoric, Channel 4 has started a new FactCheck website, based on the American site of the same name. (via perfect.co.uk) (You may remember the 2004 television debate between Dick Cheney and John Edwards where Cheney referred viewers to FactCheck.com instead of .org and the domain name owners diverted people to George Soros' anti-Bush rant instead.) Continue reading "FactCheck UK" April 21, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Can the UK election match South Korea's online?On DoWire.org, e-democracy guru Steve Clift has made a wiki for UK election websites. If you know any interesting sites that are not on the list, you can add them yourself. In his email, Clift said after a practically invisible online effort in the Australian elections, he has low hopes that the UK will be anywhere near as interesting as the American - or South Korean elections. April 11, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Is the UK more Creative or Common?openDemocracy's Becky Hogge writes another great article. On O'Reilly, she welcomes the Creative Commons copyright license to the UK. She explains the legal difference between the US and UK licenses, which allow freer use and re-use of copyrighted material. She says adoption of the license is likely to be more painfree in the UK, where there is a stronger tradition of public service media than in America. Certainly, the BBC are supportive, as are OfCom, Research Councils UK, JISC, the Museums Libraries and Archives Council, The National Health Service, and the British Library who have all promised to consider CC licenses for future projects. The British music industry has been less happy to see a new copyright-kid on the block. Will CC work against the market? Noooo, it will create new ones. April 8, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Pretend-blogger BlairApropos the UK election on the Web and trusting Tony, does anybody really believe Tony Blair's Campaign Diary (written in the first person) is really written by him? Robin Grant doesn't think so either. Pretending to blog doesn't seem like a very effective way to be cool. I was trying to remember what the candidate blogs were like in the US election heyday. I didn't find any archives. But I did find this old nifty comparison survey. Apparently Kerry wasn't much of a blogger, but Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean were. Maybe because they knew they wouldn't get elected. Bush? As the authors conclude, "It’s probably not fair to expect the Leader of the Free World to post blog entries." But maybe the Leader of Britain should. April 8, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Blogs you can hear from farawayBlogs link to blogs link to blogs. There is a perpetual conversation taking place, but very little of it crosses cultural or even geographic boundaries. A new Global voices blog systematically highlights the really good stuff from far away (like Afghanistan, Malaysia, Kenya, Iraq). Clark Boyd from the BBC spent the day with Global Voices. The co-founder, Ethan Zuckerman from Berkman Center for Internet & Society says: "It's our sincere hope that by attaching people and stories to issues and countries, we're going to have a real impact as far as getting people interested in stories that otherwise they may not pay attention to". April 6, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) Click here for a new PopeSurely, it's only a matter of time now before someone sets up a website that lets you vote online for the next pope. There have been quite a few articles on how the next pope needs to be hip to technology and new media, and certainly the old pope blessed the internet and was an early adaptor - the Vatican has had a website since 1999. In these past days, journalists were informed of the Pope's health and eventual passing by official Vatican SMS messages. On 3QuarksDaily a reader suggests a wiki with information about each candidate, and a feedback system that helps the 117 cardinals come to a decision. e-Democracy meets the Catholic church. "Do we even need the Church or can we DIY this?" asks Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing. It may seem silly now, but I sincerely believe this will happen someday. How else would you poll 1 billion Catholics around the world? The difficult part is getting the Church to care what they think in the first place. April 5, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Virtual candlesIf you want to pay your respects, but can't make it to Rome, you should light a virtual candle on Beliefnet's website. Exceptionally cute technology. April 4, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Virtual sweatshopsGamersloot.com employs a room full of young Romanian men £70 a month to play games 10 hours a day. Video games like Everquest or World of Warcraft are virtual worlds with multi-faceted characters and their own currency. Making it big requires many hours of intensive play and repetitive tasks. In the weirdest form of outsourcing ever, people can now pay companies like Gamersloot.com to improve their character's standing through intensive play while they themselves go to sleep. Even eBay has become a real life trademarket for virtual currency and gold, and items such as magical flasks and Jedi Knights. The Guardian has a great article about it. April 1, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) Democracy ArsenalThis came through the grapevine (email) from Danny Postel:
The Century Foundation are partners with openDemocracy in the Ethical Edge debate series at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. Next debate should be in a month or two, and you will be invited. March 31, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) UK: Election tool for skeptical voters"unbiased scrutiny of speeches, interviews and
manifesto pledges - informing public debate by creating a popular
resource for an information-hungry electorate." March 30, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) A declaration co-authored by one million people?Here's an interesting innovation in online activism: A whole bunch of American organisations (most of them faith-based) are getting their members together 30 March to write a "Declaration for Peace and Justice and against the Iraq war". They're using a new piece of online writing software called Synanim. Users log on and have a certain amount of time to write their contributions in small groups. Then everyone chooses the iterations they like the most, bit by bit. The software tallies the "votes" and combines it all into a document that can be reworked again by all. I think you have to "be there" to really understand how it works. They promise it's as easy as buying a book on Amazon, so if you agree with the goals and concerns of the organisations you should check it out (and let me know what it's like). They're expecting (hoping?) one million individuals (!) will take part in the "Write In" which is scheduled throughout a couple of different sessions during the day. If it works, it's a pretty amazing way to reach a "naturally emergent consensus," as it says on Synanim's website, on such a large scale. Software that lets you edit Word documents together with someone else over the internet tends to be a little less ambitious. I'm personally rather glad that openDemocracy authors don't insist on watching their articles be edited in real-time... I heard about it all via a TrueMajority email. That's Ben Cohen's (from Ben & Jerry's) online activism project. He's also got his checkbook in Religious Leaders For Sensible Priorities and Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities. They don't seem to have much presence on the Net, but people talk about them... March 29, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) New Creative Commons Search EngineLawrence Lessig reports that Yahoo launched a Creative Commons search engine last night that allows you to search all the content on the Web that only has "some rights reserved", meaning you can republish it or use it - sometimes even for commercial purposes - free of charge. Neat. Go play with it. March 24, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) 25 most popular political blogsPersonal Democracy Forum has made a list of the top 25 political weblogs (in English) ranked by number of links to them from other blogs. Surprised by any of the ones that made the list? March 22, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Googling print booksIf it's not online, you can't find it on Google. And that's why Google decided to start scanning library books. It's still just a beta search (that means it's still being tested), but if you enter the word "book" into the search field followed by "sartre" or "wonderland" or "openDemocracy" you can click to see the actual pages in books that mention those words. Look for the colourful book icon at the top. Google is working with libraries at the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, The New York Public Library, and Oxford University, so a lot of the texts on offer are academic ones. They're also working with several publishers. If the book is in the public domain you can sometimes read the whole thing online. Otherwise Google has provided handy links to where you can buy a copy. March 21, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Dyson's final frontier?Happy international women's day! Here's a post about a succesful woman. openDemocracy friend and entrepreneur Esther Dyson is holding a one day conference on space travel on March 23, the day after her annual PC Forum gathering. It's called Flight School, and its about launching commercial ventures into outer space. ""Nobody's holding a space conference, so I decided to do one," she said in an interview. "It's not that there aren't space conferences, but nothing as tacky and commercial as we want to be." Esther is a member of the private-sector advisory board that is advising the Federal Aviation Administration on its Next Generation Air Transportation System National Plan. March 8, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) Wikipedia footsoldiersIf you ever click on links in openDemocracy articles, you're bound to have stumbled on the Wikipedia website. It's like an online encyclopedia anyone can edit - even you - and we link to it a lot. In the March issue of Wired Magazine, Daniel H. Pink has written a great article with interviews with some of the people who write and update wikipedia entries most obsessively by the hundreds. You'll be surprised to hear who they are. Towards the end of the (very long) article, it's questioned whether Wikipedia is a reliable source. Compared to what? It's honestly imperfect, in a way that encourages you to think for yourself. See something you don't like? Fix it. I was impressed to learn that wikipedia footsoldiers set up watches on more controversial subjects, and can restore entries within minutes when/if there is wiki-vandalism. March 7, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Crackdown on blogging?Doug Ireland, who is taking part in openDemocracy's debate Rethinking Iraq, says in his blog that "a political crackdown on blogging is coming in the US - thanks to McCain Feingold": Declan McCullagh has a piece out [3 March] for CNET that is a must-read for both bloggers and political activists: an interview with Bradley Smith, one of six members of the Federal Election Commission. It's a real eye-opener: Smith "says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over. In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines." March 4, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) 14 years in jail for IranianSad news. The day after the global "day of action" in support of Iranian bloggers Arash and Mojtaba, Arash Sigarchi was sentenced to 14 years in prison (via Politech). He's charged with espionage, and insulting both Ayatollahs Khomenei and Khamenei, among other "crimes" against the Iranian state. March 2, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Email from Hillary ClintonAt home, in my own personal capacity, I followed the links in Caspar's post Killing in Sudan and ended up on a page where I could email my Senator about stopping the genocide in Sudan. I live in New York. I forgot I had sent the email, until I received a response from Hillary Clinton saying she's been telling Colin Powell to do something about Sudan for ages. Sure, you might say its just a standard response. But what if it's not? Continue reading "Email from Hillary Clinton" February 25, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) BlogCall with US blogsOver at Democrats.com in America Bob Fertik has initiated a regular live conference call between upto 100 progressive bloggers and news journalists. They call it BlogCall and if you fit the bill, you should ask him for an invite to the next one. Today's BlogCall (the first ever) was with special guest John Aravosis from AmericaBlog.com speaking about the Jeff Gannon/male prostitute scandal which has burst out of the White House in recent weeks thanks to much digging and blogging. The whole BlogCall will be broadcast today on RadioLeft.com at 6pm ET. Continue reading "BlogCall with US blogs" February 24, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) What's the fuss about Iranian blogs?Iran's government isn't very tolerant when it comes to freedom of expression. In the past couple of years Iranian bloggers have become some of strongest defenders of freedom on the Net. According to this source there are more than 75,000 active Iranian blogs, most of them in Persian (here's a list of those in English). That's a lot. Most of us who surf around in English are completely oblivious to the fact that Persian is the fourth most popular web log language. I first became aware of Iranian blogs when, Hossein Derakshan emailed openDemocracy last year the time of the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to tell us how Iranian president, Seyyid Mohammad Khatami, was exposed for lying about internet censorship in a WSIS press conference that was broadcast live on the web. We asked Hossein to put it in an article, "Censor this: Iran's web of lies". (The second phase of WSIS is taking place in November 2005 in Tunisia, and preparatory meetings started earlier this month.) Unfortunately, as the bloggers have grown in importance, they've also more frequently become targets for arrests and torture. Official Iran is torn between the positive effect of spreading Persian and positive images of Iran around the world, and the negative (to them) effect of government criticism. Around half of 2000 Iranian bloggers polled around the time of the US presidential election on Hossein's website preferred Bush over Kerry, because they hoped he would invade Iran and unseat the regime. This view was most common among bloggers who still live in Iran. In a recent post, Hossein blames Iranian state media for making everybody believe in the opposite of whatever they say is bad. February 23, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Flashmob the Iranian UN mission?Juan Cole has an interesting suggestion: Wouldn't a flashmob protest in front of Iran's permanent mission to the UN be an appropriate blogger tool for this campaign? Here's something for openDemocracts in the New York metropolitan area to organise on a cold February day! Iran (Islamic Republic of) February 23, 2005 in Media & the Net | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) Free Mojtaba and Arash Day
Reporters without Borders reported on the arrests earlier this month.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
