Today’s New York Times reports on Ushahidi–Swahili for testimony–an open-source platform for user-generated content. Or, to put it less generically, Ushahidi is social networking for humanitarian relief, a disaster-witness wiki.
Ushahidi was developed in Kenya to respond to the violence that followed the 2007 election. Kenyan lawyer and blogger Ory Okolloh
posted online the idea of an [...]
Google Voice gives users a phone number that can dial multiple phones when called. Mine rings my mobile, home, office, and Maine numbers. I’ve given it to my immediate family and close friends so they don’t have to chase me if they want to get in touch. If I don’t pick up one of the [...]
The U.S. Commerce Department reports that 40% of the U.S. population lacks home broadband Internet access, based on a fall 2009 Census Bureau survey of 54,000 households. Broadband penetration is smallest in rural areas, where 54% of households subscribe to broadband compared to 66% in urban areas. 38% of those without broadband access say they [...]
Last week domain-name overseer ICANN announced that sometime next year it will allow domain names that are not in the Latin alphabet. The first non-Latin domain names are expected to be in Chinese and Arabic. It’s an inevitable and perhaps overdue milestone in the Internet’s evolution into a global platform.
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The suit by two (now former) Yale Law Students against AutoAdmit for harassing and threatening messages recently settled, quietly ending a controversy that began in a characteristically over-the-top anonymous Internet message board. The suit, filed in 2007, gathered considerable attention because of the offensiveness of the comments, the battle over unmasking anonymous posters, and the [...]
Twitter tweets are 40% ‘babble’
A figure that does not include tweets of self-promotion.
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It has become necessary to impose greater hurdles on user registration for this blog and for AFC Legal Resources. The latter site now requires administrative approval for new users, and I’m ratcheting up the restrictions here to cut down on comment spam. It’s unfortunate, and a pain–for new users and for me, because restrictions mean [...]
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