Harvard goes Open Access

From Berkman Fellow Melanie Dulong de Rosnay...

Yesterday, Harvard Universitys Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) unanimously voted a motion on open access policy. FAS Faculty members now grant to the university a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to distribute their scholarly articles, provided it is for non commercial uses. An opt-out mechanism allow Faculty members to waive this mandatory assignment upon request for some articles, for instance in the case of incompatible rights assignment to a publisher...

Berkman in Turkey: Internet & Democracy Digital Activism Event

From the Internet & Democracy Project...

On February 7th and 8th, the Berkman Center hosted a three day conference entitled Digitally-Empowered Activists: Getting the Tools to the People Who Need Them in Istanbul, Turkey. The presentations highlighted efforts by people to use tools, such as video, SMS, and blogging, and focused on ways of communicating these methodologies to activists who can benefit from them...

Pros and Cons of Facebook activism

By Ethan

Imran Jamal is at the Berkman meeting in Istanbul as the “unofficial UK representative” of the Burma Global Action Network, a group that advocates for the monks and citizens who protested the Burmese junta during the “Saffron Revoluion”. His focus is on the use of Facebook for digital activism, reporting his experiences using Facebook during a recent campaign.

Ken Banks on Frontline SMS

By Ethan

Another update from the Berkman internet and democracy meeting in Istanbul:

Ken Banks, the creator of FrontlineSMS, offers a presentation on the strengths and weaknesses of mobile phones for activism. His software is a clever and powerful tool that allows a user with a laptop and a GSM mobile phone to send a large number of SMS messages. The software runs on the laptop and can send a message - through cable to a mobile phone or through a GSM model - to a list of recipients. It can be quite slow - Ken says that on old Nokia mobiles, it sends about eight messages a minute, and overwhelms the phone in the process - but it’s vastly faster than manually sending thousands of SMS messages.

Sami ben Gharbia and video activism

By Ethan

I’m in Turkey this week participating in a Berkman conference on internet and democracy - it’s a meeting of activists from almost twenty countries, talking about ways that activists can use the internet to promote democratic movements. Many of the sessions are off the record or under Chatham Rules, to protect the identity of people speaking here. But the first speaker this morning is Sami ben Gharbia, the leader of Global Voices Advocacy and a leading Tunisian free speech advocate, and he’s not exactly a shy guy. :-)

Turkish faces bloom on Facebook

The Facebook frenzy is spreading in Turkey more than anywhere else in the world. Facebook membership grew by 466 percent in Turkey between Oct. 26 and Nov. 25 last year, The...

EU eyes safer cyberspace

EU offers help for parents who are confused by the wide range of software that claims to make cyberspace safer for children.

NATO to strengthen cyber defence role

The military alliance has agreed to set up a new body to coordinate responses to cyber attacks carried out against its members and gather intelligence to prevent them from happening in the future, a NATO official said.

Guide: How to Find A Volunteer Developer For Your Activism Project

By Mary on netsquared

Title: How to Find A Volunteer Web Developer For Your Social Change Website or Web Application

Published by: NetSquared (2008)

What is it?: A short online guide of 10 steps to recruiting a volunteer web developer to help you build a social change web application.

URL: www.netsquared.org/blog/joesolomon/part-2-how-find-volunteer-web-developer

Action Alert: Unblock Yemen Day

By Mary on yemen

What? Unblock Yemen Day
When? Friday, February 15
Where? on your own blog
How? (1) Cease blogging for a day and instead (2) post one of the following banners on your blog
Why? To protest the blocking of the independent news site YemenPortal.net and at least seven other sites, as well as the violent intimidation of YemenPortal editor Walid Al-Saqaf, whose car was attacked by state security personel.
Who is organizing the action? Mideast Youth

The Facebook Spam Battle Continues

By Nick O'Neill

Last night Facebook announced that they would begin using a new model for limiting application notifications. Applications are grouped into buckets and each of those buckets have a specific number of daily user notifications that they can send out. It appears that the default is now 15 notifications per user per day. This is a significant decrease from the initial level of 40 notifications per user per day for each application.

Tactic: Colombians Organize with Facebook

By Mary on hongkong

Description: Four Colombian uses of Facebook created the group Un Millon de Voces Contra las FARC (a Million Voices Against the FARC) and used the page to organize a day of worldwide protests against the Colombian rebel group on Monday, February 4.

Israeli City Complaint Against Google Earth

By Philipp Lenssen on Search

Officials of the Israeli city Kiryat Yam have filed a complaint with the police due to Google Earth, Buzzblog reports. Their request: Google should remove a bit of user-generated content placed on Kiryat Yam in Google Earth. The bit reads:

<<This is one of the Palestinian localities evacuated and destroyed after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. For basic information about this locality, including brief history, the 1948 events, its current status, pictures and statistics, visit: www.palestineremembered.com.>>

 

Microsoft’s Antitrust Issues

Writers’ Strike: Why the Web Wins

All About Hackers

By Loki on white hats

Not all hackers are bad. Why? Simple. It’s because only a hacker can fight (and most likely correct the wrongdoings of) another hacker. But first, what exactly does a hacker do?

Digging Deeper::Your Guide to Online Privacy

From time to time, I’ll give an overview of one broad MediaShift topic, annotated with online resources and plenty of tips. The idea is to help you understand the topic, learn the jargon, and take action. I’ve already covered blogging, citizen journalism, social networking and other topics. This week I’l look at online privacy.

Your Take Roundup::Kindle, E-Readers Must Be Cheap, Flexible to Supplant Books

 Are e-readers like the Amazon Kindle going to make print books obsolete, or will people’s undying love for the printed book continue on in the digital age? While the Sony Reader didn’t catch fire, the recent release of the Amazon Kindle has brought another round of debates over the future of the print book.

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