Berkman Buzz: Week of May 18, 2009

May 22, 2009

BERKMAN BUZZ:  A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations.  If you'd like to receive this by email, sign up here.

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*Citizen Media Law Project: "Top Conservative on Twitter Takes Critic to Court"
*danah boyd: "is Facebook for old people?"
*Dan Gillmor: "E-Books, Business Models and Sloppy Reporting in NY Times"
*ProjectVRM: "A Declaration of Customer Independence"
*Ethan Zuckerman: "New York Times on Social Translation"
*StopBadware: "SBW, ASC, NCSA launch Chain of Trust initiative"
*David Weinberger: "'The Daily Show': a fanboy’s notes from the audience"
*Weekly Global Voices: "Pakistan: A Humanitarian Crisis"

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"Shortly after the election last November, a call went out within the conservative blogosphere to use Twitter to organize conservatives online.  Not long thereafter, Michael Patrick Leahy and Rob Neppell started the website Top Conservatives on Twitter and pushed like-minded conservatives to use the Twitter hashtag #TCOT (the # allows twitterers to tag their tweets so others can easily search for the term on Twitter), which quickly caught on with the Tax Day Tea Party crowd..."
From David Ardia's blog post for the Citizen Media Law Project "Top Conservative on Twitter Takes Critic to Court"

"In Atlanta, I met a shy quiet 14-year-old girl that I'll call Kaitlyn. She wasn't particularly interested in talking to me, but she answered my questions diligently. She said that she was on both MySpace and Facebook, but quickly started talking about MySpace as the place where she gathered with her friends. At some point, I asked her if her friends also gathered on Facebook and her face took on a combination of puzzlement and horror before she exclaimed, 'Facebook is for old people!' Of course, Kaitlyn still uses Facebook to communicate with her mother, aunt, cousins in Kentucky, and other family members..."
From danah boyd's blog post, "is Facebook for old people?"

"A New York Times reporter asks an interesting question — How Much Should an E-Book Cost? – in a Week in Review article, but her reporting is so shallow that the answer is murky at best. She starts this piece with an anecdote about a best-seller by political thriller writer David Baldacci. The book’s Amazon Kindle price was originally set at over $15, but that price set off a rebellion among the author’s fans, one of whom wrote on the comments at Amazon that the price was just too high to bother with his work..."
From Dan Gillmor's blog post, "E-Books, Business Models and Sloppy Reporting in NY Times"

"Peter Hirshberg tells me that we have a Declaration of Customer Independence already, and it’s called The Cluetrain Manifesto. Could be. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the 10th anniversary edition comes out in June. Peter thinks what we need now is a Constitution. Could be that’s what we’re working toward with ProjectVRM..."
From Doc Searls' blog post for ProjectVRM, "A Declaration of Customer Independence"

"Leslie Berlin did a great service to proponents of social translation by featuring a range of online translation efforts in her column for today’s New York Times, titled 'A Web That Speaks Your Language'. Not only did she give an overview of some of the important players in the space, she focused on reasons why human approaches to translation are important at a time when people around the world are creating online content in their native languages..."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post, "New York Times on Social Translation"

"Today at the Anti-Spyware Coalition (ASC) public workshop in DC, StopBadware, the ASC, and the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) launched the 'Chain of Trust' initiative. From the press release: 'Developed by the Anti-Spyware Coalition (ASC), National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and StopBadware.org, the Chain of Trust Initiative will link together security vendors, researchers, government agencies, Internet companies, network providers, advocacy and education groups in a systemic effort to stem the rising tide of malware...'"
From Maxim Weinstein's blog post for StopBadware, "SBW, ASC, NCSA launch Chain of Trust initiative"

"Our thoughtful and inventive children gave us tickets to 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart' for Chanukah. Yesterday was the day. We had an easy ride from Boston to NYC on the MegaBus, which was clean and on time. But, although they promised free wifi, it was actually wifi-free once we left Boston. (Word order makes such a difference!) Nevertheless, for $15 each way per person, it’s hard to muster a good head of complaint..."
From David Weinberger's blog post, "'The Daily Show': a fanboy’s notes from the audience"

"Pakistan has been hit by a severe humanitarian crisis as a result of the military onslaught against the Taliban insurgency. The valley of Swat is in Pakistan’s Malakand division, a beautiful valley often dubbed as another heaven on planet earth. It used to be a prominent tourist resort before it was struck by militancy and extremism of the local Taliban. It is being reported that over one million (some reports even suggest that figure stands at near 2 million) people have fled their homes from various areas in the Malakand division and FATA including Buner, Dir and Swa..."
From Ammar Faheem's blog post for Global Voices, "Pakistan: A Humanitarian Crisis"