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The World Without Facebook

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, November 22 2011

Composite map of the world at night versus areas of the world with Facebook. Areas of the world without Facebook are the bright points of light in this false-color map from artist Ian Wojtowicz. Reprinted with ... Read More

Budget Chair Paul Ryan Takes Us, Once Again, to the Movies

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, May 25 2011

House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan is back in front of the cameras, this time pushing back against criticisms of his plan for Medicare that have resonated everywhere from New York's 26th district's special election ... Read More

Edward Tufte: Saving America from "Intellectually Impoverished" Data Design

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, May 11 2011

Edward Tufte; photo by Nancy Scola. Over in the Washington Monthly, Joshua Yaffa has a deep profile of information design legend Edward Tufte that includes a look at how he answered his country's call to service and got ... Read More

The Obama Energy Agenda, Illustrated

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, May 6 2011

The Obama White House continues its experimentation in the political infographic space with the one above, on Obama's approach on energy production and gas prices, released this afternoon in conjunction with the ... Read More

Participants Annoyed at How 'Wikileaks' Gitmo Docs Got Out

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, April 25 2011

Pentagon press secretary Geof Morrell When it comes to Wikileaks, there's the story, and then there's the backstory. Today, you might have noticed, we've seen a sudden deluge of news stories on just who has been held at ... Read More

Why Apple Tracker-Gate Is the Future of Journalism

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, April 22 2011

What an unnamed iPhone user's location file looks like after being run through programmers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden's iPhone Tracker app. There have been some grumbling in tech circles ever since Apple ... Read More

NASA Charts Its Journey into the Open Government Space

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, April 18 2011

A year after NASA releases its Open Government Plan, the space agency infographics what it's up to in that universe. Read More

A Map of the U.S. Open Government World

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, April 6 2011

GovLoop, GOOD, former U.S. Deputy CTO Beth Noveck, and open gov researcher Angie Newell team up to create a clickable visualization that maps out more than 350 federal open government projects. Read More

The (Kinda) United States of Wired America

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, March 9 2011

Click through to play with Digital America Read More

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On Change.org, a Big-Name Call for Dimon's Ouster from New York Fed

The International Monetary Fund's former Chief Economist Simon Johnson is using Change.org to build support for his position that JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon must resign from the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Johnson, a British economist who's a longtime professor at MIT, established the petition on Wednesday. Since then, more than 3,000 people have signed on to support his position. GO

Howard Rheingold on Congress, Digital Literacy, and Making Political Movements

From Congress to the classroom, digital literacy is a key skill that's often sorely lacking, Howard Rheingold, author of the new book "Net Smart: How to Thrive Online," said on Thursday's Personal Democracy Plus call — but there are ways to change that.

Rheingold derided "the degree of technological ignorance" in government and in particular Congress. "It's worse than ignorance," he said. "It's know-nothingness ... it's so endemic." During the fight over the Stop Online Piracy Act, members of Congress could often be heard pleading their ignorance of the Internet and its inner workings even as debating legislation that some said would alter the structure of the global communications network.

The call, moderated by TechPresident editorial director Micah Sifry, was recorded and is available online here.

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Should U.N. Politics Affect the Internet?

A key U.S. House subcommittee plans on examining the implications of the U.S. ceding control of key aspects of the global Internet infrastructure next Thursday. The House Energy and Commerce's subcommittee on Communications and Technology announced Wednesday that it's going to hold a hearing on proposals at the United Nations' International Telecommunication Union to afford more control over Internet governance to countries other than the United States. GO

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This Isn't What Political Air Time Usually Means

MoveOn.org is asking supporters for $150,000 in donations to fly a plane above high-dollar fundraisers for Mitt Romney with "a message that reminds voters how he represents his corporate and 1% donors." MoveOn previously hired a plane to fly over Romney's Liberty University graduation speech with the message "GOP = HIGHER SCHOOL DEBT." GO

There's a New $200 Million Fund for Super-High-Speed Broadband Projects

An initiative to build and test gigabit-speed broadband networks is set to fund up to six next-generation Internet access projects across the country, fueled by a new $200 million broadband development funding program, Gigabit Squared and Gig.U announced this morning. GO

New Rice University Paper Chronicles Impact of the Internet On U.S. Foreign Policy

We all know that the Internet has transformed the way that the United States conducts diplomacy, and the way that it views national security, but where should we look to find evidence of this? This is the wide-ranging subject matter of a new paper published on Tuesday by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The paper provides a round-up of some of the major turns of events between 2005 and 2011 in the realms of Internet governance, the development of online public diplomacy at the State Department, the evolution of the Internet-fueled Arab Spring, and the establishment of the shadowy U.S. Cyber Command in Fort Meade, Maryland, among other things. GO

Messin' with Lamar Smith, Revisited

Remember that grassroots fundraising campaign to put a "Don't Mess with the Internet" billboard in the home district of Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and sponsor of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act? All of the money required came in, and Fight for the Future, the advocacy group opposing more stringent copyright protections online, writes that the billboard went up. GO

Republican National Convention Organizers Sever Ties With Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions

After eight years producing online content for the Republican National Convention, GOP web consultant Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions is off of the project. "Campaign Solutions was retained to help develop our convention website and digital strategy, but they are no longer involved in convention planning," James Davis, the convention's communications director, told techPresident Tuesday. It's unclear what precipitated the of the relationship between the convention organizers and Campaign Solutions, which has been producing the online component of the event since 2004. But Donatelli's name surfaced in a controversial anti-Obama ad pitch sent to a Super PAC backed by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, which appeared in its entirety in the Times last week. Ricketts has since disavowed the proposal and Donatelli has denied any involvement. GO

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