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2008: Who's Ahead Online? (Ds)

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, January 23 2007

With the 2008 presidential campaign suddenly intensifying, it's a good time to lay down some baseline references for watching the race online. I spent a couple of hours last night tracking down various numbers on the ... Read More

Announcing PDF 2007: The Flattening of Politics

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, January 22 2007

Save the date of May 18, folks, and make your plans to be in New York City, because this year the fourth annual Personal Democracy Forum is going to be our biggest and best conference yet. The theme this year is "The ... Read More

On PDF's new site design

BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, January 19 2007

Yes, it's true, the site does look a bit different! (Hey, all you RSS subscribers, come take a look!) A big thanks to everyone who worked on the site redesign: Josh Levy, our associate editor, who has sweated every ... Read More

Pew: 14 Million Online Political Activists in U.S. Today

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, January 17 2007

The Pew Internet & American Life Project is releasing another of its ongoing reports tracking Americans' use of the internet today (and someone leaked us an advance copy), and this report contains some really ... Read More

Avaaz.org: MoveOn Goes International

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, January 16 2007

I've been collecting string about Avaaz.org for a while now, but after I queried founders Ricken Patel and Tom Perriello (of ResPublica) and Paul Hilder, and they begged off on a pre-launch interview, I figured there ... Read More

More on Technology and '08

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, January 10 2007

Jerome Armstrong started a pretty interesting thread over on MyDD by asking "What emerging technology or web-based practice do you think will have the biggest impact in 2008?" Among the answers coming in from ... Read More

Visualizing the Blogosphere

BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, January 5 2007

Matthew Hurst has been producing some really cool computer-generated maps of the interconnections in the blogosphere, and his latest image is a beauty. He's centered it on DailyKos (the bright white dot in the center) ... Read More

More About Placeblogger.com

BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, January 4 2007

So it turns out I was wrong to say yesterday that Lisa Williams' plan for her useful new site Placeblogger.com included "selling ads across its whole network of sites." That prompted queries from some curious bloggers ... Read More

How-To: Seven Ways to Find Local Political Blogs

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, January 2 2007

If all politics is local, then locally-focused blogs are obviously important to anyone engaged in politics. But since the internet doesn't come with zipcodes attached to urls, it's not obvious how to discover these ... Read More

Edwards Announcement Sets a High Bar Online

BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, December 28 2006

Not only did John Edwards's 2008 campaign team break new ground online with his use of mobile shortcode (see Justin Oberman's blog post below), they've been busy all over the web. They put the obligatory video up on ... Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed monday >

Czech Prime Minister Resigns Following Corruption and Surveillance Scandal

The prime minister of the Czech Republic resigned yesterday, irreparably damaged by a corruption scandal and the possibility of impropriety in his personal life. According to the Czech constitution, his entire government will also have to relinquish office.

GO

The Disappearance of Greece's Fourth Estate

On June 11 the Greek government abruptly announced the immediate closure of the country's state-owned public broadcasting company, ERT (Hellenic Radio and Television), in what they said was a cost-cutting measure. The move, which came with no prior discussion, puts 2,750 people out of work, in a country with an official unemployment rate that is nearly 27 percent. It also makes Greece the only European Union member state without a public broadcasting service. GO

friday >

Mayors of New York City and San Francisco Announce "Digital Cities" Summit

The Mayors of New York City and San Francisco announced Friday that they're co-hosting meetings in the Fall and early next year to examine the "best practices" that lead to tech-enabled economic growth. The meetings are follow-ups to the initial Bloomberg Technology Summit held last year in New York City. This year's summit in New York ... GO

New York State Joins GitHub to Get Feedback on Open Data Policy

New York is the first state to publish an initial draft of its open data guidelines on GitHub to seek feedback from the public, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in a press release Thursday. GO

Brazilians Protest Forced Evictions on YouTube and in Mock World Cup

Tomorrow Brazilians who have been forced out of their housing in advance of the 2014 World Cup will stage their own “People's Cup” in Rio de Janeiro to draw awareness to forced evictions.

GO

A “Fix-Rate” for Corruption: Integrity Action Wins the Google Global Impact Award

“From wanachi (“citizen”) to up there,” Emmanuel Dzombo explains with an upward sweep of his hand, is how Integrity Action has begun to reverse the bureaucratic top-down approach that has often blocked development work in Kenya. Dzombo is a local leader in Chengoni, Kenya, a country that ranks towards the very bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index – at 139. The organization believes it could do more, and Google.org seems to agree. The Google Impact Challenge will provide the charity with £500,000 that will allow it to develop a mobile application for tracking and collecting data from citizens. GO

Crowdsourced "Danger Maps" Track Air, Soil and Water Pollution in China

Chinese citizens are exposing sources of pollution and other environmental problems by contributing to the partially crowdsourced website 'Danger Maps'. So far, the Chinese government is letting them get away with it.

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thursday >

U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board To Meet Next Wednesday

A long dormant independent agency that was at least nominally supposed to exercise a modicum of oversight over the booming intelligence-industrial complex is scrambling to meet up next Wednesday, but the public will still be none the wiser about what it plans to do, since it is a closed door meeting. The only indication that the toothless ... GO

Despite Software Problems, Civic Hackers are Pedaling Bike Share Data

Reporters are shoaling around the news that New York City's new bike sharing system, Citi Bike, is benighted with problems stemming from its high-tech software. But that's not putting the brakes on plans to explore what programmers might do with data generated by the system by hosting a Citi Bike Civic Hack Night later this month. GO

Grassroots Republicans Are Not Waiting for the RNC To Revamp Their Digital Strategy

Several members of the Republican Party rank and file aren't waiting around for the GOP to reinvent itself on the technological front. They're organizing events themselves to explore what a tech-enabled GOP might look like for the 2014 cycle. GO

wednesday >

New Russian Law Makes Publication of Information on Gay Rights Illegal

On June 11 the Russian parliament passed a bill against “homosexual propaganda” that effectively outlaws gay rights rallies and bans informational or pro-gay rights material from publication in the media or on the Internet. Violators of the law will risk heavy fines and censorship and, in the case of a media outlet, risk being shut down. It had near unanimous support, passing in a 436-to-0 vote, with only one abstention.

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Macedonia Draft Law to Regulate and Restrict the "Last Arena for Freedom of Speech"

The draft of a media regulation law in Macedonia has journalists and press freedom watchdogs up in arms. The proposed Law on Media and Audiovisual Media Services was written by the government behind closed doors and without input from the media or NGOs. It has been interpreted as a decisive move on the part of the government to limit speech online in a country where press freedoms are already limited. Until now, Internet-based news sites were not regulated like print media.

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Trying to Prosecute Online Piracy in Canada? Good Luck!

A private firm that is monitoring Canadians who download pirated content online has found itself at the center of a legal battle. GO

tuesday >

In Kenya, Apps Fizzle Out After Winning Competitions

This spring, Kenyan tech blogger Kennedy Kachwanya left the regional Microsoft Imagine Cup competition thoroughly underwhelmed by the quality of the apps presented. He then wrote an impassioned post (in his words, a rant) on his website Kachwanya.com about the decline of the Kenyan mobile app. He is also outraged because even winning apps seem to fall off the map – basically fail – after the competition is over and media coverage dies down.

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Companies and Internet Activists to Congress: Investigate Potential NSA Surveillance Overreach

Over 80 advocacy organizations and Internet companies including Free Press and Mozilla have launched what they are calling a global petition to Congress calling for an inquiry into the scope and scale of reported government surveillance and reforms to the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendment Act and the state secrets privilege. GO

Canada Has its Own Version of PRISM, Reveals Toronto Newspaper

While it may not have a Bond film-worthy name like PRISM, it turns out Canada has a surveillance program of its own. Canadian news outlet The Globe and Mail learned about the program through Access to Information requests filed with the government. They sifted through hundred of records, although extensive passages were redacted for reasons of national security so there are still lingering questions and concerns.

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