Public Radio International's The World has a fascinating look at how it looks like the autocomplete functionality on mobile phones is changing the way some Chinese people are using their language. PRI reports that as users of phones with English-language keyboards begin typing Chinese in pinyin, the system for transliterating between Chinese characters and the English alphabet, they are presented with the vast array of homophones each word may have. So each time someone starts typing a text message, they're assisted in wordplay by the autocomplete or autocorrect functionality of their phones. In Chinese, many words sound very similar to words that mean nowhere near the same thing. This is helping people to develop new slang and is giving people the opportunity to resurrect old words, PRI reports. Read More

TechPresident escapee former associate editor Nancy Scola drills in to the Intellectual Property Attaché Act, a bill Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) seemed poised to include in a Tuesday markup session at his House Judiciary Committee before tech blogs and Internet people freaked out. The bill has not made it to markup. She writes that the bill seemed like a post-SOPA trial balloon from Smith, a hard-liner when it comes to copyright and the chairman of one of the most powerful committees in the House. And he was floating it into an uncertain atmosphere — air that longstanding supporters of the old-guard content industry might not find as breathable as they have in the past. Read More

Today is Jordan Raynor's last day at the right-leaning digital communications firm Engage, he announced in an email to friends. Raynor is leaving digital politics to join LifeSync, a technology product shop in Tampa, Fla. He's also working on his own venture, Citizinvestor, an as-yet-unlaunched platform for crowdsourcing citizen donations to specific projects. Citizinvestor is a finalist in Code for America's Civic Accelerator program. Read More

The Federal Communications Commission is set July 17 to conduct a public demonstration of the system it has built to host its newly mandated database of political television ad buys. Beginning with television stations in the nation's 50 largest media markets, broadcasters will be required to post information about which campaigns have purchased advertising time on their television stations — which they are already obliged to store at their offices and make available to the public upon request — on a central, FCC-hosted database. On July 17, FCC officials will demonstrate the system in-house staff have built to handle this work. Read More

The utility of a free and open Internet, even to people who don't have direct access to it, certainly gives support of Internet freedom more universal interest. And perhaps it lends credence to the optimists, like Susan Crawford, telecommunications policy expert and visiting professor at Harvard's Kennedy School and School of Law. She wrote Thursday that the resolution was a step forward for human rights online. Read More

The point's been made again and again that the Obama campaign basically has a technology startup working in-house, but that's not all: Team Obama looks to want that startup to be able to handle its own full-service digital advertising, too. Read More

For Personal Democracy Plus subscribers, techPresident is asking some of the folks out there on the leading edge of digital politics and government to point out just one tool or service that has become a mainstay, a must-use or just incredibly helpful in their work. There's one rule: It can't be something the person has built or the person's company is selling. We're asking folks to pay some karma forward here and highlight an innovation coming from elsewhere that makes their work easier.

The first contributor is Jim Pugh. Pugh worked for Obama for America 2008 and now manages technology for the progressive group Rebuild the Dream. ActionKit is an online organizing toolkit he uses to manage 600,000 online members.