Berkman Buzz: Week of June 1, 2009

June 05, 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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*The Internet & Democracy Project discusses the release of a technicolor "Interactive Iranian Blogosphere Map"
*Doc Searls laments the plight of the subscriber in "WSJ vs. Subscribers"
*Charles Nesson discusses "America in the Internet Age"
*David Weinberger braves the new search frontier, sifting through "Bing, Google... and Kayak"
*Ethan Zuckerman breaks down "Henry Jenkins on civic media at Beyond Broadcast 2009"
*The OpenNet Initiative reports on China's reaction to the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen in "China blocks Twitter, Hotmail, Flickr before Tiananmen anniversary"
*Stuart Shieber asks, "What percentage of open-access journals charge publication fees?"
*Eszter Hargittai looks at "The dog ate my computer and other contemporary student excuses"
*Weekly Global Voices: "Middle East: Bloggers React to Obama's Address"

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"The Internet and Democracy Project team is excited to announce today that we’ve officially launched an online interactive version of our classic study on the shape of the Persian blogosphere that we published earlier last year. The tool allows users to easily sort through the data that we’ve collected on discourse networks in Iran, and explore some notable features of the online blog landscape. The map reveals the clustering of certain types of blogs, and reveals the content make up across the web as a whole..."
From the Internet & Democracy project blog post, "I&D Project Launches Interactive Iranian Blogosphere Map"

"I’ve been a Wall Street Journal subscriber since the 1970s. I still am. The paper shows up at my doorstep every day. I’ve also been a subscriber to the Journal online. It costs extra. I’ve gladly paid it, even though I think the paper makes a mistake by locking its archives behind a paywall. (Sell the news, give away the olds, I say.) ..."
From Doc Searls' blog post, "WSJ vs. Subscribers"

"I was a small boy amidst the patriotism of the Second World War. I learned to love America as the face of liberty, the palladium of justice, and the embodiment of the ideal of government under law, not under men. This paramount place of Law is etched in Latin above the entrance to our law school; it is our shining national ideal, the religion of America, the essence of the enlightenment that flowed from our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, our Bill of Rights..."
From Charles Nesson's op-ed for the Harvard Crimson, "America in the Internet Age"

"I’ve been poking around Microsoft’s Bing. The short answer is that it’s not going to move me off of Google. Of course, my Google inertia is pretty much sleeping-hippopotamus-like at this point. Plus, Bing’s ripping off of Kayak.com (see below) has me pretty cheesed. Bing does some useful and clever things. But, I think some of the coverage has actually undersold Google. For example, Hiawatha Bray in the Boston Globe, whose writing I like a lot, today opens his review with the clever idea of searching for 'google' at Bing and for 'bing' at Google..."
From David Weinberger's blog post, "Bing, Google... and Kayak"

""Beyond Broadcast 2009, the fourth edition of a conference that focuses on the future of public service media in a digital age, starts today in Los Angeles at the USC Annenberg school. ... Our focus here is on hyperlocal media and “hyperglobal”, the ability to share ideas across international borders using digital media. As such, Dean Wilson and his team have made an effort to internationalize the conference, bringing speakers and participants from around the world and focusing much of the program on community media across the world, both in American communities and in other nations..."
From Ethan Zuckerman's breaks down "Henry Jenkins on civic media at Beyond Broadcast 2009"

"In preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on Thursday, China has blocked access to Twitter, Hotmail, Flickr, MSN Spaces and several other web services, reports the Times Online. The Internet crackdown, which began at 5pm local time on Tuesday, is part of a larger effort to minimize possible avenues of dissent before Thursday..."
From the OpenNet Initiative blog post, "China blocks Twitter, Hotmail, Flickr before Tiananmen anniversary"

"In the popular conception, open-access journals generate revenue by charging publication fees. The popular conception turns out to be false. Various studies have explored the extent to which OA journals charge publication fees. The results have been counterintuitive to many, indicating that far fewer OA journals charge publication fees than one might have thought. You can verify this yourself using some software I provide in this post..."
From Stuart Shieber's blog post, "What percentage of open-access journals charge publication fees?"

"At IHE, Scott Jaschik has a piece about a site that sells corrupted files to students as a way to get a few extra hours or days to finish an assignment. The idea is that the student submits a corrupted file, it takes the instructor a while to figure this out, in the meantime the student finishes the assignment..."
From Eszter Hargittai's blog post, "The dog ate my computer and other contemporary student excuses"

"From being described as the 'self-appointed world leader' to questioning his choice of speech venue to choosing to turn a deaf ear to his speech, blogs across the Middle East are reacting to US President Barack Obama's policy speech on the Middle East just delivered in Cairo, Egypt..."
From Amira Al Hussaini's blog post for Global Voices, "Middle East: Bloggers React to Obama's Address"