View of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. EFE/Emilio Naranjo. found in Chinese Director Zhang Yimou Presents Dazzling Opening Ceremony at The Olympic Games
I was not aware of this campaign as my life was disrupted by Yahoo! But probably I would not hear it on time. As usual, there is also a blogger community which is reclusive in some sense and I am an outsider. I realized this in a recent Turkish blogging awards stuff. I heard about the competition when the list of candidates were released. I compared mine and others in many categories and could not know why I wasn’t there. Most of blogs are in Turkish of course and blog networks are based on some sort of friendship networks. If you are not in it, then you are out. This is the same for many issues (like cinema circles) and not different in new media stuff. Otherwise, mine is known, too but only needed when they need a sample for ‘English language’ blogs:) Still the campaign is good though ‘authorities’ will only be happy to see more closed websites (!)
Web Censorship Is So Bad in Turkey That Blogs Are Shutting Themselves Down In Protest
Erick Schonfeld
It doesn’t take much to get your Website banned in Turkey. Pretty much any complaint to a lower court can get a Website blocked in the country. Websites including YouTube, DailyMotion, Alibaba, Slide.com, and some WordPress blogs have all been banned, usually because of some purported slight to the Turkish government or Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.”
148 Turkish websites in protest against government ban
This week 148 153 (the number is rising) Turkish websites are shut down as a protest against the government ban. The Turkish government blocks YouTube since January this year. And in the last few weeks various other international websites like DailyMotion are also blocked. The 148 website as listed here show this text at their frontpage:
Bu siteye erişim kendi kararıyla engellenmiştir
Misunderstanding cyberwar
There’s nothing like the term “cyberwar” to capture a reader’s attention. For those who grew up on “Wargames”, “Sneakers” or William Gibson novels, the term conjures up images of heroic hackers in shadowy basements, frantically tapping on keyboards in a life and death struggle against the enemy on the other side of the glowing CRT screen.
27 Definitions for “Blog”
Last week I asked: what is a blog?
Who seeks what, where – Google’s Search Insight
The folks at Pingdom, a company focused on server performance monitoring, posted a fascinating little piece of research based on Google’s Insights for Search tool. I’m interested both in their specific research question – what social network tools are popular in what parts of the world? – and the richness of the data available via this tool from Google. (Basically, I’m feeling boneheaded that I hadn’t realized this data set was available.)
The Pingdom folks tried a simple experiment, using Search Insight to search for information on a dozen social networking sites. The Insight tool reveals how popular searches for particular terms are, and where in the world those searches are coming from. This lets the Pingdom folks conclude:
# Facebook is most popular in Turkey and Canada.
# Friendster and Imeem are most popular in the Philippines.
# LinkedIn is most popular in India.
# Twitter is most popular in Japan.
# LiveJournal is more popular in Russia than it is in the United States.
Tool: Twitter being used by the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce
Recently, companies and organizations have been hopping onto Twitter to use as a tool to communicate to customers, followers, interested parties etc. Some use the tool as a newsreel, some use it for promotions or customer service. But what would the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce get out of the situation?
Tactic: Using Twitter to increase participation at Blood Drive
click to watch video footage
Description: The Austin Social Media Club and the 501 Tech Club recently had a meet up. They also gave blood. These two things happened simultaneously at the “Tweetup Blood Drive” in Austin, Texas.
Who wants what? Google Insight on spam, pirated software and other fun stuff
Oh man. Google Insights for Search is good fun. I’m supposed to spend this week finishing a number of writing projects. But I spent almost all today running different searches and being basically stunned at how much data’s available through the interface.
I mentioned earlier today that Google makes “related” search information available – there’s much deeper information available through the CSV interface, giving fifty associated terms for most searches. I have high hopes of playing with this data to revive my clustering tools, trying to explore the “freudian web” of associations between search terms.
Google’s Top Disappointments
Nicole Ferraro has a post on the top 10 Google disappointments since they began operations. The post is 11 pages long and worth a read if you have the time. Nicole seems upset that so many of Google’s products and services are crap but yet they still get so much press coverage that Google is not deserving of. I don’t agree with most of her disappointments so I’ve included a few of my own after her list.
Here’s Nicole’s list from “bad to worst” with my take next to each:
Email Roundtable::Should Copyright Law Change in the Digital Age?
This is the final part of my three-part email roundtable discussion looking at the new Code of Best Practices in Fair Use of Online Video created at the behest of the Center for Social Media at American University.
In the first part, the respondents in this email roundtable talked about what the Code means, how they might put it into practice, and some thoughts on the way artists work without thinking about the law. In the second part, the group talked about ways to spread the Code through a special video explaining fair use to video producers.
Another link; a fair use guide: http://wiht.link/fair-use-
Tactic: European net freedom lobbyists unite to fight new internet bill
Description: The Telecoms Package is a proposal from the EU Commission to reform the EU’s regulatory framework for electronic communications networks an
d services with a view to completing the internal market for electronic communications. It is seen by net freedom activists as a serious threat. Especially some of the amendments brought in related to intellectual property rights would lead to monitoring and blocking of websites and peer-to-peer exchanges by ISPs, permitting ISPs to sanction users by suspending or terminating internet access.
The proposal was due to be voted on by the responsible committees on July 7, followed by the vote of the European parliament as a whole on September 2. Not long before the committees’ votes hundreds of amendments to the package made it impossible to overlook it, which bore the huge risk that members of the parliament would vote for a bill the consequences of which they could not foresee.
Tools Being Used: Blogs, Wiki
Speed matters: A report on Internet speeds in all 50 states (PDF; 5.0 MB)
Source: Communications Workers of America
From press release:
The results of a nationwide study of Internet connection speeds in the United States reveal little progress over the previous year in the country’s median data download speed. At the present rate—with a gain of only four-tenths of one megabit per second—it will take the U.S. more than one hundred years to catch up with current Internet speeds in Japan.
Four memediggers compared: Digg, Reddit, Meneame and Hugg
Filed under: aggregators
Call them memediggers, community moderated news sites, or digg clones. User submitted news moderated up or down by other users and available for comments. Call them whatever you wish, this new class of social media warrants close examination in order to make the most of the potential it presents. Which of these sites get the most use, see the most conversation and are most useful to their readers? How should people looking to launch new digg-style sites organize things in order to maximize adoption and impact?
Global Voices Online begins compilation podcast
Filed under: citizen media, podcasting, aggregators
The international blog aggregation community Global Voices Online has released its first edition of the Global Voices Podcast, a compilation of clips from podcasts around the world. The first episode manages to fit in satire from South Africa about the visibility of queer people, coverage of bloggers’ take on an upcoming election in Mexico (in Spanish) and clips from Jamaica, Israel/Palestine, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. Set to music from Creative Commons label Magnatune, the whole thing fits in 17 fast paced minutes! It’s hosted by the very charming Georgia Popplewell, from the Carribian Free Radio podcast (an Adam Curry favorite).
20 Free eBooks About Social Media
If you want to learn more about social media but don’t wanna spend money on Amazon, you just got served. Chris Brogan compiled a nice list with 20 free eBooks that you can download and start reading right away. Topics go from viral marketing to blogging and Twitter, enjoy!
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