Berkman Buzz: Week of July 13, 2009

July 17, 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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*Internet & Democracy Project: "Google: Tomorrow’s Silicon (not Crystal) Ball"
*David Weinberger: "Senator, would you be ok with an all-white Court? Really?"
*Dan Gillmor: "White House Not Honoring Promises on Openness in Public Questioning"
*Harry Lewis: "Facebook In Iran"
*StopBadware: "Local Malware Causes Infected Websites"
*Ethan Zuckerman: "Notes from Digital Bridge Institute, Abuja, Nigeria"
*Citizen Media Law Project: "The Guinness World Record for Trademark Fail"
*Doc Searls: "Health Care Vs. Risk Snare"
*Weekly Global Voices: "Bombings kill nine in Indonesia"

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"The Silicon Valley has yet to create true forecasting technology, but certain online tools are providing voyeurs with the ability to interpret political events in terms of observable changes over time. In some cases, comparing relative change over time with against an expected baseline of activity can indicate predictive deviations. Explosive growth in use of the term 'SBY' across Internet platforms corroborated what polling said off-line: Incumbent President Yudhoyono was re-election bound. And Google Trends data stood in contrast to polling expectations that Jusuf Kalla would lead Megawati in second place.  Google, and not polling data, corroborated actual electoral ordering..."
From Scott Hartley's blog post for the Internet & Democracy Project, "Google: Tomorrow's Silicon (not Crystal) Ball"

"Sotomayor is saying something designed to inspire those against whom expectations have run: In American culture, the image of a wise judge generally is that of an old white man. Sotomayor is asking her audience to embrace a different image. In fact, she says, the very life experiences that traditionally have worked to disempower people make one wiser than those who haven’t had those experiences..."
From David Weinberger's blog post, "Senator, would you be ok with an all-white Court? Really?"

"The Obama administration has turned its 'online town hall' events into a parody of what they were intended to be, which specifically were supposed to include a genuine effort to include questions from the citizens of this nation in an open process, not the bogus pre-selection system that is turning into an Obama trademark. Yesterday’s health care event, for example, included just three questions from online contributors (and only eight in all, notes the TechPresident blog) in an event that makes some of George W. Bush’s staged events seem almost spontaneous..."
From Dan Gillmor's blogpost, "White House Not Honoring Promises on Openness in Public Questioning"

"Evgeny Morozov has a scary report at the NPR web site that should serve as a reminder of how hard it now is to keep our various personae separate when our social life is conducted online. I’ll quote, rather than paraphrase, what happened to an Iranian-American woman. 'On passing through the immigration control at the airport in Tehran, she was asked by the officers if she has a Facebook account. When she said "no", the officers pulled up a laptop and searched for her name on Facebook. They found her account and noted down the names of her Facebook friends...'"
From Harry Lewis' blog post, "Facebook in Iran"

"Over on BadwareBusters.org, we are seeing a trend of websites that have been infected because the webmaster’s personal computer was infected. Specifically, the local malware seeks out saved usernames and passwords in popular FTP clients like CuteFTP and Filezilla and then uses the stolen information to upload modified code to the web server. This leads to a frustrating cycle for the unsuspecting website owner, who discovers bad code on his/her site, fixes the problem, and then finds the site infected again a day or two later..."
From Maxim Weinstein's blog post for StopBadware, "Local Malware Causes Infected Websites"
About Maxim Weinstein:
<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/mweinstein>

"Digital Bridge Institute founded in 2004 by the Nigerian Communications Commission. The organization is wholly owned by the NCC, but operates as a private company on an independent guarantee. The organization is planning a move to a seven-hectare campus under the leadership of Professor Akwule, an eminent Nigerian academic who has returned from the United States to lead DBI forward..."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post, "Notes from Digital Bridge Institute, Abuja, Nigeria"

"As if anyone needed more proof that shooting off an ill-conceived cease-and-desist letter is a bad PR move, Techdirt points us to a recent gem.  The hilarious FAIL Blog publishes user-submitted photos and videos documenting various mishaps, incongruous images, and other examples of human fallibility, which it refers to as 'fails.'  Last week, it published 'Record Breaking Fail,' which showed a screenshot from the Guinness World Records website for the entry 'most individuals killed in a terrorist attack.'  The 'fail' captured by the screenshot was a link on the page -- apparently part of the site's template -- encouraging readers to 'break this record...'"
From Sam Bayard's blog post for the Citizen Media Law Project, "The Guinness World Record for Trademark Fail"

"So I’m a guest on the latest TWiL (This Week in Law) podcast. Lots of VRM links at that link, below the topic, 'How modernization of health data management is changing the health system.' Here’s what I tried to say, or would like to have said better than I did. Health care now lives in the networked world. That world is comprised of data. And the network is, as Kevin Kelly perfectly puts it, a copy machine. The result is, as Bob Frankston perfectly puts it, a sea of bits. Health care needs to adapt to this world, embrace it, take full advantage of it..."
From Doc Searls' blog post, "Health Care vs. Risk Snare"

"Another terrorist act happened again in Indonesia. Two bombs hit Indonesian capital Jakarta on Friday. Witnesses said that the first explosion was heard at 07:40 AM coming from the JW Marriott, and two minutes after a second explosion ripped a restaurant of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, located about 500 meters from the first blast's point, filled with people who are attending breakfast meetings. Both luxurious hotels are known to be frequented by western foreigners.…"
From Carolina Rumuat's blog post for Global Voices, "Bombings kill nine in Indonesia"