Facebook is a weapon of mass construction
For those of you who think “Facebook Activism” is only good for whining about the company’s latest invasions of your privacy, or expressing support for Stephen Colbert’s “presidential race,” check it:
Over 270,000 Facebook members, mostly Central American youths, have joined a group called “One Million Voices Against FARC,” which was established one month ago. The group leaders organized a rally, using Facebook as a means to gather support both within Columbia as well as globally. This past Monday, between 500,000 and 2 million Columbians marched in the streets, with thousands joining them in over 133 countries worldwide.
The 2008 Presidential Election and Online Social Networking
Both MySpace and Facebook have become important sites for political campaigning. In 2006, Facebook launched a feature called Election Pulse, enabling members to indicate which candidates they support, learn about and discuss political issues, and gauge how candidates are faring among Facebookers through polls organized by state. MySpace, in turn, recently launched Impact Channel, fulfilling essentially the same functions as its Facebook counterpart but reaching an even greater audience. Furthermore, the Channel is heavily video-oriented, featuring a series of dialogues with the candidates in collaboration with MTV Networks. Visitors to the site are able to submit videos of themselves asking questions of the candidates, promoting a sense of being directly involved in political democracy. Similar collaborative endeavors between network television and online social networks include the YouTube/CNN presidential debate in June of 2007 and the Facebook/ABC presidential debate in January of 2008.
What Newsrooms Could Learn About Mobile from the Obama Campaign
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama campaign’s use of text messaging and mobile offers some valuable lessons for newspaper journalists, the digital development director for Gannett New Jersey says in his blog on the Courier-Post’s Web site, according to E&P.
Life magazine photo collection goes online From Marilyn Monroe to Barack Obama, 10 million images to be made available on Google
European Commission consults on network and information security
by admin
European Commission consults on network and information security: “The European Commission has launched a consultation on how it can strengthen the European Union’s response to computer attacks. The Commission is canvassing views ahead of a debate early next year about an EU-wide co-ordination of computer security.”
The dangers of Internet censorship – The Boston Globe
The dangers of Internet censorship – The Boston Globe
By Harry Lewis, November 5, 2008
SUPPOSE that government regulators proposed to read all postal mail in order to protect families from things they should not see. Anything not legally prohibited would be delivered. Any unlawful words, pictures, or videos would be thrown away.
Sound like Orwell’s “1984,” or China? Perhaps.
Yet change the technology from ink on paper to bits in wires – the zeroes and ones that flow through the Internet – and these are the plans of significant democracies. France is targeting copyrighted music and movies. Australian officials are going after child pornography – but may check for other bad stuff while they are at it. Objectionable snooping? Both governments say that law-abiding citizens have nothing to worry about……….
Facebook’s five best apps?
Facebook is halfway through its app competition, and is asking users to help choose the five best apps from 25 finalists. Each of those has been whittled down from 600 entries and there’s a grand prize of $225,000 to the five apps that win. These are all funded by fbFund, Facebook’s fund for tech entrepreneurs.
Digital Challenges: Notes from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture’s Recent Conference
I recently returned from Athens Greece and a facinating meeting hosted by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. The meeting (”Digital Heritage in the New Knowledge Environment: Shared Spaces & Open Paths to Cultural Content“) explored how the Greek cultural heritage sector is embracing and is challenged by the explosion of digital technologies and content that is currently reshaping the globe.
Iranian ‘blogfather’ arrested, say reports
For several years now, Hossein Derakhshan has been at the forefront of Iran’s burgeoning blogging scene. Better known as Hoder he’s been writing about the country and its politics online since – and, from time to time, he’s also contributed to the Guardian.
Digital Youth Project: If you care about kids and want to understand how they use technology and why, this is a must-read
The Digital Youth Project, a MacArthur-funded three year, 22 case study, $3.3 million ethnographic study of what kids are doing online, has wound up and published its results. The project was undertaken by the eminent sociologist Mimi Ito and her talented colleagues (including the incomparable danah boyd) and is the largest and most comprehensive study of young peoples’ internet use ever undertaken in the US.
On the Economics of the Kindle
perlow writes "Just how many books a year would you need to read before the cost of Amazon’s Kindle is justified? The answer is not so cut-and-dried. If you’re a college student and all of your texts were available on Kindle (possible but unlikely), you could recover the cost of the reader in a semester and a half. For consumers to break even with Kindle’s cost in that time, they would have to be in the habit of buying and reading four new hardback books per month — if the convenience factor wasn’t part of the equation. At two books per month, breakeven would be in three years." Here is the spreadsheet if you want to play with the numbers.
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