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Aaron Swartz awarded in Technorati developers' contest

BY Christian Crumlish | Wednesday, January 19 2005

The widget on the PDF home page that shows which Senators and Congressfolks are being talked about the most in the blogosphere is driven by Technorati using an application developed for this site by Aaron Swartz. Micah ... Read More

Kos on Blog Ethics

BY Christian Crumlish | Tuesday, January 18 2005

In a post called Ethics, Kos addresses the recent Zephyr / Dean / WSJ / Armstrong-Williams-equivalency flap: So to recap, if I write about something in which I hold a financial stake, I will disclose it. If I don't, then ... Read More

Orcinus is tracking incidents of 'violence, threats or intimidation'

BY Christian Crumlish | Tuesday, November 2 2004

David Neiwert is setting up a blog clearinghouse at his site, Orcinus, to report incidents of violence, threats, or intimidation against Democratic campaign workers, supporters, and voters. (He leaves it to "the other ... Read More

The importance of user interface

BY Christian Crumlish | Tuesday, November 2 2004

Snopes has the skinny on a voting-machine mishap in Texas. An early voter who attempted to vote a straight ticket discovered that her vote for Kerry/Edwards had been switched to a vote for Bush/Cheney. The cause appears ... Read More

Adina Levin's guide to campaign tools

BY Christian Crumlish | Thursday, October 28 2004

The collection of essays now known as Extreme Democracy should appear in book form early next year, but it is coming out in serialized PDF (portadble document format) at the moment at the project's blog. Read More

'Caging' memos mistakenly sent to parody site

BY Christian Crumlish | Thursday, October 28 2004

What is it with Republicans confusing .coms and .orgs? The GeorgeWBush.org parody site gets a lot of misdirected mail at their catchall address. Amidst the chaff were the occasional strategic or informative message sent ... Read More

Open-source voter file management

BY Christian Crumlish | Wednesday, October 27 2004

Advokit is an open-source grassroots-network voter-file campaign-management tool developed by veterans of the Dean primary campaign and available either as a hosted (ASP) service or as a stand-alone install. It offers ... Read More

Voting against vs. voting for

BY Christian Crumlish | Wednesday, October 20 2004

Brief blog reveries: Simon World's excellent notes from a John Zogby talk in Hong Kong led me to Cicero's post about The 'No' Vote at Winds of Change. Read More

Lessig and friends launch p2p-politics.org

BY Christian Crumlish | Wednesday, October 20 2004

From Lessig's political "spam" message about the new p2p-politics site that is leveraging archive.org to provide an open source for political ads: Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed thursday >

Mastercard Funding New Mobile-Based Financial Services in Kenya (Updated)

MasterCard is funding a Grameen Foundation initiative to bring financial services to the poor and the unbanked in Kenya.

GO

Transparency and Public Shaming: Pakistan Tackles Tax Evasion

In Pakistan, where only one in 200 citizens files their income tax return, authorities published a directory of taxpayers' details for the first time. Officials explained the decision as an attempt to shame defaulters into paying up.

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wednesday >

Facebook Seeks Approval as Financial Service in Ireland. Is the Developing World Next?

On April 13 the Financial Times reported that Facebook is only weeks away from being approved as a financial service in Ireland. Is this foray into e-money motivated by Facebook's desire to conquer the developing world before other corporate Internet giants do? Maybe.

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The Rise and Fall of Iran's “Blogestan”

The robust community of Iranian bloggers—sometimes nicknamed “Blogestan”—has shrunk since its heyday between 2002 – 2010. “Whither Blogestan,” a recent report from the University of Pennsylvania's Iran Media Program sought to find out how and why. The researchers performed a web crawling analysis of Blogestan, survey 165 Persian blog users, and conducted 20 interviews with influential bloggers in the Persian community. They found multiple causes of the decline in blogging, including increased social media use and interference from authorities.

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tuesday >

Weekly Readings: What the Govt Wants to Know

A roundup of interesting reads and stories from around the web. GO

Russia to Treat Bloggers Like Mass Media Because "the F*cking Journalists Won't Stop Writing"

The worldwide debate over who is and who isn't a journalist has raged since digital media made it much easier for citizen journalists and other “amateurs” to compete with the big guys. In the United States, journalists are entitled to certain protections under the law, such as the right to confidential sources. As such, many argue that blogging should qualify as journalism because independent writers deserve the same legal protections as corporate employees. In Russia, however, earning a place equal to mass media means additional regulations and obligations, which some say will lead to the repression of free speech.

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Politics for People: Demanding Transparent and Ethical Lobbying in the EU

Today the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) launched a campaign called Politics for People that asks candidates for the European Parliament to pledge to stand up to secretive industry lobbyists and to advocate for transparency. The Politics for People website connects voters with information about their MEP candidates and encourages them to reach out on Facebook, Twitter or by email to ask them to sign the pledge.

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monday >

Security Agencies Given Full Access to Telecom Data Even Though "All Lebanese Can Not Be Suspects"

In late March, Lebanese government ministers granted security agencies unrestricted access to telecommunications data in spite of some ministers objections that it violates privacy rights. Global Voices reports that the policy violates Lebanon's existing surveillance and privacy law, Law 140, but has gotten little coverage from the country's mainstream media.

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