"The Cute Cat Theory
Inspiration: Fouad Mourtada is Free!
It is with great joy that we break this story. This is a huge victory for digital activism. Thank you to all the people who supported the campaign, both online and offline!
CASABLANCA, March 18 - Fouad Mourtada was released from Oukacha Prison at approximately 8:00pm local time today, having received a royal pardon.
Skepticism: “Nothing Can Substitute for the Street”
Although this site is about how technology empowers activists on a global scale, we must not be blind optimists or think of digital activism as a panacea. For this reason we include thoughtful criticism of digital activism. If we want to make truly meaningful change we must address challenges as well as opportunities.
Habib Saleh
President Bashar al-Assad has turned Syria into one of the Internet's worst black holes. He has organised the systematic filtering of opposition online publications and launched his political police on a remorseless hunt for dissidents and independents journalists using the Internet to express their views. Habib Saleh, 59, a writer and businessman, is one of the victims of this systematic crackdown on cyber-dissent.
The readers' editor on ... plagiarism and the internetStephen Pritchard: The internet has made the recycling of other people's work all too easy but equally it has made the detection of such practices almost instantaneous
Google's recipe for success revealed
Uncommon Knowledge: Suprising insights from the social sciences
Why woman should marry someone less attractive, how the Apple logo makes people 'think different' and more. (By Kevin Lewis, Boston Globe)robots and suicide bombing
a bizarre relationship in a decidedly cyberpunked worldOn Monday, 4 February 2008 in a shopping mall in Dimona, southern Israel, a "woman has been killed in a suicide bombing [...], the first such attack by Palestinian militants in over a year," ↑reported the BBC. Very sad and tragical (absolutely no irony or cynicism here), as the most of what I heard from the Middle East via the traditional mass media as far as my memory reaches back.
Website Traffic Series Part 1: Web Design and CSS Galleries
By Daniel ScoccoWordPress vs. Movable Type
As you probably know, WordPress 2.5 is about to be released. It was supposed to be live already, but the development team decided to delay it by one week or so. So far so good, except that the guys from Movable Type, a competing blogging platform, decided to play smart and published a post encouraging WordPress users to switch to their software instead of upgrading. Here is how they started the post:
11 Innovative Ideas To Make Money Online
By Daniel Scocco50 Thoughful, Funny and Polemic Blogging Quotes
I love quotes, what can I say. Below you will find some that I gathered recently. Some of them are thoughtful, others funny, others yet polemic. All of them should be worth a reading though. If you have one to add, just let me know.
Facebook as a Platform for Political Debate
Over the past few weeks I have been seeing an increasing number of articles covering political controversy popping up on Facebook. Just the other day I touched on the topic of Facebook being involved in mideast drama as it pertained to Israel and Palestine. Yesterday I saw another article about how debate over the future of Pakistan is taking place on Facebook. During his keynote interview at South by Southwest a couple weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg touched on the issue of political debate on Facebook and how it is becoming a forum for political discussion.
How SocialAds Will Revolutionize Advertising
Last night while involved in a deep dialogue over dinner I finally realized the significance of Facebook’s social ads program. Before explaining how this system will theoretically democratize advertising, I’d like to give a brief overview of the tranformation taking place in media today.
Is the Internet an Effective Tool for Political Engagement During Elections?
From the Internet & Democracy Project...
One major challenge of mature democracies such as the US is political engagement of its citizens. America has one of the lowest voter turnout rates among the developed countries. It is particularly true for the young population. But has the trend begun to change noticeably? Is the Internet a factor in all this?
Authenticity: Is It Real or Is It Marketing?
Berkman fellow David Weinberger has penned an interactive case study for the Harvard Business Review. "Authenticity: Is It Real or Is It Marketing?" takes a look at the value of employee perspective on company issues and goals, teasing out&nb
DigiActive documents digital activism
I’ve gotten a great deal of feedback on my Cute Cats talk, which is very gratifying. It’s been a useful reminder that there’s a great deal of interest in digital activism, the practice of using online tools to advocate for offline political change. (Businessweek ran a pretty good article on digital activism a month back, focused mostly on online donations and on Facebook organizing.)
The Cute Cat Theory Talk at ETech
....
Web 1.0 was invented to allow physicists to share research papers.
Web 2.0 was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats.
....
With web 2.0, we’ve embarced the idea that people are going to share pictures of their cats, and now we build sophisticated tools to make that easier to do. as a result, we’re creating a wealth of tech that’s extremely helpful for activists. There are twin revolutions going on - the ease of creating content and the ease of sharing it with local and global audiences.............
Protecting the Internet Without Wrecking It
How to meet the security threatDailymotion vs. Youtube
OpenSocial Foundation Debuts With Yahoo Onboard
The nonprofit OpenSocial Foundation has been launched. OpenSocial will provide a standard for the sharing of social network data using APIs.
