"Grand Theft Auto Review: This Videogame Is Art
Grand Theft Auto Review: This Videogame Is Art
The game gives our mercurial hero a conscience, a fatigue with death, a desire to start over.
How to study surveillance
Chris Conley leads one of the most difficult research projects we’ve undertaken at the Berkman Center - the surveillance study of the Open Net Initiative. Over the past five years, the good folks at ONI have gotten very smart about how the internet is filtered in nations around the world. What’s much less clear is how the internet is monitored and what governments, law enforcement agencies, corporations and others are able to track as far as online behavior.
One problem: if surveillance is performed competently, it should be undetectable. Second problem: it’s often to someone’s advantage to claim that surveillance is taking place, even when it’s not, as it can change behaviors. (Think about “dummy” cameras mounted on your house as part of a fake “security system”. If they’re convincing enough, perhaps they don’t actually need to work.) Conley mentions my comments about the panopticon effect of surveillance in a recent Newsweek article - I assert that Zimbabwe isn’t able effectively monitor the Internet… but by stating that they will, they’ve forced a large number of users to remove sensitive information and conversations from the Internet.
It's RSS Awareness Day
Bloggers and people in the Internet industry are aware of RSS but it's reach seems to stop there. To inform more people about the benefits of RSS the RSS Awareness Day campaign was launched by Daily Blog Tips. You can find the RSS Awareness Day website at Rssday.org. The website has a page with buttons and banners for bloggers who want to spread the word about the RSS holiday. This page also contains information that shows how few Internet users know about RSS.Digging Deeper::9 Tips to Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
With search engines ranking as a top traffic driver for many blogs and content sites, optimizing a site for search engine exposure is an increasingly critical component of any online marketing effort. Search engine optimization, or “SEO,” means using technical and not-so-technical techniques to make sure that people searching for topics you write about will find your site.
Blogs, Cyber-Literature and Virtual Culture in Iran
Source: George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies (via DTIC)Social networking applications can pose security risks
Sarah Brown is unusually cautious when it comes to social networking.The college sophomore doesn't have a MySpace page and, while she's on Facebook, she does everything she can to keepMicrosoft’s Mesh, Google’s iGoogle and Yahoo’s Y!OS
This past few weeks definite indicators have come forth as to how the interface to the internet is being reshaped to better suite our needs. Some of the biggest names in the industry have revealed their plans on making the internet experience a lot more user centric while at the same time keeping people rooted to their respective platforms.
Tactic: Facebook used in tracking war criminals
Description: Anti-genocide group Aegis Trust created a campaign using the social networking site Facebook to find alleged war criminals in Darfur.
Tools used:Facebook, Google Maps and e-petition
Tactic: Why Don’t Chilean Parties Use Web Tools?
Description: Last week El Mercurio (one of the oldest newspapers in Chile) published a report about the use of Web technologies by political parties in the country (original source in Spanish). The article stated that what the parties were using was very very basic and lacks the “social” element. Even though each one of these parties have a website (list here), they don’t apply the latest interactive Web 2.0 technologies.
How Google thinks
Fortune has an interesting interview with Google cofounder Larry Page. Here he is pontificating about alternative energy, one of his company's eclectic new research areas:
