Personal Democracy Plus Our premium content network. LEARN MORE You are not logged in. LOG IN NOW >

In Tumblr, Yahoo Acquires an Audience and an Activist Edge, Too

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Monday, May 20 2013

David Karp, May 16, 2013. Photo: Flickr/Digitas Photos

With a sticker price of approximately $1.1 billion, Yahoo's Tumblr acquisition doesn't just come with an audience CEO Marissa Mayer expects will grow Yahoo's footprint by 50 percent. Whether Yahoo knew it or not, the struggling Internet ur-company has also bought itself an activist constituency. Read More

Facebook, Yahoo NH Debate Roles Leave Us Wanting More

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, January 11 2012

Before they fade further into the past, a quick note on last weekend's back-to-back presidential debates in New Hampshire and the role of online platforms therein. In case you've forgotten, I'm talking about the ABC News/Yahoo event Saturday night and the NBC/Facebook event Sunday morning. And neither made a dent, when it comes to using interactive media to involve the public in the debates. Read More

What Conservatives and Liberals Find On Yahoo! Search

BY Miranda Neubauer | Wednesday, November 30 2011

Depending on political preference, the year 2012 portends either a wholesale revocation of the Second Amendment or a Hillary Clinton presidential run. That's according to data from Yahoo, which last week quietly launched ... Read More

Calling Bull on "Teenagers Don't Know Who Osama Bin Laden Is" Search Stories

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, May 4 2011

Yahoo's Search folks are pushing out a story under the banner of "Teens Don’t Know Who Osama Bin Laden Is," and it's getting picked up widely, a confirmation of the assumption that American kids these days ... Read More

Reagan Son Selling Email Done Right

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, August 2 2010

Eldest Reagan son Michael is selling @Reagan.com email addresses to deny liberal technology companies the business: Read More

Hacking Sarah Palin: Email Trial Kicks Off in TN

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, April 20 2010

The Tennessee trial into the alleged hacking of Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account by a University of Tennessee student has just kicked off. Read More

Return of the Global Online Freedom Act (and Some Strange Politics With It)

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, May 8 2009

The Global Online Freedom Act (H.R.2271) goes back into the House bill hopper, and with it some topsy-turvy politics. Called "GOFA" for short, the bill would restrict U.S.-based tech companies from being ... Read More

Testing New Search Tools on Government & Campaign Information

BY Sarah Granger | Wednesday, December 3 2008

Back in the day, when Yahoo! was the only search game in town, many wondered why Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com), and eventually Google would attempt to break into that market. The answer continues to be the same - although ... Read More

The Curious Case of Palin's Inbox

BY Fred Stutzman | Wednesday, October 8 2008

David Kendall, the University of Tennessee student accused of hacking Gov. Sarah Palin's email account, was indicted today by a federal grand jury. According to the indictment, Kendall is charged with unlawful access to ... Read More

BREAKING: Sarah Palin Yahoo! email account hacked

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, September 17 2008

It appears that someone has hacked into one or more of Sarah Palin's personal email accounts on Yahoo! and published some of the contents on the web. According to an entry on Wikileaks: "Circa midnight Tuesday the 16th ... Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed tuesday >

Honda Campaign Rolls Out Endorsements From Asian American Stars

Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) rolled out several additional endorsements from Asian American leaders and celebrities Tuesday, with one of them vouching for his high-tech bona fides. GO

Here Are The People President Obama Hopes Will Repair American Elections

The Presidential Commission on Election Administration established by President Obama after problematic 2012 elections now has a web presence at SupporttheVoter.gov. Obama established the commission by executive order on March 28 "to identify best practices in election administration and to make recommendations to improve the voting experience." GO

After Oklahoma Disaster, Neighbors Look Online for Ways To Help

In echoes of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast, social media sites and small business websites in and around tornado-wracked Moore, Okla., are full of offers of help, questions about missing pets and loved ones, and evidence that neighbors are willing to reach out to help one another in a disaster. On a single Facebook group, there's a Mexican restaurant in Oklahoma City promising free meals to first responders or people hit by the tornado; a mother a few hours' drive from Moore offering to open her door for children who might need a place to stay; a resident sharing a picture of a found dog and contact information for the owner to get in touch. GO

Change.org Lands $15 Million From Omidyar

Change.org capped an extraordinary few years of growth Tuesday with the announcement that it has landed a $15 million investment led by the Omidyar Network. GO

What German Politicians Think of Google Glass

The German government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel has not had the easiest relationship with Google. The company launched a public campaign against a law backed by her coalition that would require search engines to pay to show news articles in search results, with mixed results. What's more, Google has long had to navigate the privacy waters in Germany and throughout the European Union. But that has not stopped her federal minister for economics and technology, Philipp Rösler, from giving Google Glass an enthusiastic test run as he leads a delegation of German technology companies and politicians on a trip to Silicon Valley this week as part of German Valley Week. GO

Crowdsourcing Waste Management Solutions in Montenegro

For once we aren't talking about the worldwide scarcity of toilets, just good old-fashioned household waste. Montenegro has a garbage problem so bad even the tourists are complaining about it. A new mobile app sponsored by the Agency for Environmental Protection, NGO Ozon and United Nations Development Programme in Montenegro will hopefully get citizens involved in reporting illegal garbage dumps. GO

monday >

Her Majesty's Government Wants to Monetize Open Data

A new paper from the chair of the U.K. government's Open Strategy Board outlines the best practices for the government's open data policies. The government-commissioned Shakespeare Review – after author Stephan Shakespeare – looks into ways to monetize open data, and recommends an all-encompassing National Data Strategy.

GO

Will Silicon Valley "Disrupt" Politics With a Candidate for Congress?

Sean Parker, of Napster fame and now executive general partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund, has invested in political startups before. But last week, he went a step further — co-hosting a fundraising event for a candidate for Congress. Parker and SV Angel co-founder Ron Conway organized a crowd of Internet industry luminaries to support Ro Khanna, a former assistant deputy secretary in Barack Obama's Commerce Department. Khanna is preparing a challenge to Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), whose newly redrawn congressional district encompasses Silicon Valley. GO

Burma's Upcoming Telecom Revolution Will Probably Not Bring Internet Freedom

Burma (Myanmar) is on the threshold of an Internet revolution, but Human Rights Watch has warned companies to proceed with caution or risk trampling Burmese citizens' rights. GO

friday >

Chilean Anti-Corruption Resource: A Crowdsourced Database of Social and Political Connections

In countries where a small minority of social circles have a majority of the political and economic power, personal relationships can affect major decision-making, a serious concern of anti-corruption activists. A new web platform stores personal profiles of key players in Chilean business and politics, complete with biographies and personal and professional connections through family, education, social circles, employers and coworkers, to make tracking social relationships and conflict-of-interest easier. Called Poderopedia (from the Spanish word for power), the project sounds kind of like LinkedIn, but the creation and management of profiles is being crowdsourced out to journalists, activists and concerned citizens.

GO

Middle Eastern Telecom Accused of Working With Saudi Arabia to Spy on Citizens

Mobily, an arm of the state-owned Middle Eastern telecom giant Etihad Etisalat, has been accused of working with Saudi Arabia to develop software that would allow the government to bypass protections for social media users. The exposé comes from Moxie Marlinspike (neé Matthew Rosenfield), an expert in a certain type of malicious Internet attack called MITM (man-in-the-middle), whereby attackers intercept and secretly alter private messages exchanged via email and other social media platforms. GO

Saudi Religious Leader Warns Twitter Users of Consequences in the Afterlife

In late March, Saudi Arabia's top religious cleric said Twitter was for clowns and corrupters. Earlier this week, he said anyone using social media, in particular Twitter, “has lost this world and the afterlife.” His comments might be laughable, if they did not come at a time when the Saudi government is looking into monitoring or blocking social media sites and eliminating user anonymity.

GO

thursday >

What The Other Silicon Valley Immigration Group Is Doing This Month

A bipartisan coalition of political advocacy, business and tech groups are moving ahead to launch a social media blitz next week designed to persuade members of the Senate to vote in favor of immigration reform legislation supported in Silicon Valley. "We're going to create a virtual digital storm," said Jeremy Robbins in a Wednesday ... GO

The New Yorker Hopes "Strongbox" Is a Wiretap-Proof Sieve for Leaks

The New Yorker yesterday became the first outlet to implement DeadDrop, a new system for sources to submit information to journalists online in a more secure and anonymous way than, for example, email. GO

Female Organizer of Pakistan's First Hackathon Stresses Collaboration Over Competition

After Pakistan banned Valentine's Day this year, Sabeen Mahmud started an online protest in which people uploaded photos to mock the government ban. In the weeks following she received death threats and menacing phone calls, and early on she had to stay home from work. That did nothing, however, to keep her from further organizing. Last month, the café she started in Karachi hosted Pakistan's first ever hackathon, which tackled problems including sanitation, crime, disaster management, and education. She even invited a government representative to observe the initial conversations, tackling sensitive areas like government inefficiency and elections.

GO

wednesday >

White House Innovation Fellows Project Spins Off Into A Business

Clay Johnson and Adam Becker joined the Presidential Innovation Fellows program to help the White House fix the way government does business. Now they're turning that mission into a business themselves. GO

Fighting Fires With Data, New York City Launches New Safety Inspection System

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that New York City has implemented city-wide a new risk based inspection system focused on fire safety that is driven by analytics from multiple city agencies. GO

Chinese Netizens Use Digital Initiative to Gain Media Attention for Unsolved Poisoning Case

Last month a medical science student at a Shanghai university died from poisoning, allegedly murdered by his roommate. The specifics of the crime echoed a case from the mid-1990s, in which a 19-year-old student was poisoned with thallium. That case has once again been thrown into the media spotlight, but after 18 years the media has changed and the spotlight means a trending hashtag on Sina Weibo or an online petition to the U.S. President.

GO

PDF France 2013: “Au Code, Citoyens!”

This year PDF France will take place in Paris on June 13, with the theme "Au Code, Citoyens!" ("To Code, Citizens!") The speakers' lineup includes some of the continent's leaders in the digital revolution. GO

More