Berkman Center for Internet & Society

As the Google hacking incident is turning into an international scandal, the China Daily News released the news that Chinese police had cracked down the country's largest hacking school in Hubei back in November 2009. The report seems to suggest that hacking is a private business and has nothing to do with the government.

According to a Hubei local news (via Hong Kong Mingpao Daily), the hacking school, “Black Hawk Safety Net” has over 180,000 members. The Hubei Police said that back in 2007 they received complaint from internet cafe that their computers were hacked and the hackers blackmail the cafe owner for 8000 yuan (equivalent to USD1000). The three hackers involved came from the “Black Hawk” School and they were arrested in April 2008. Last year, the police arrested two key managers of the school.

The China Daily News also explains that:

Hubei province named Black Hawk Safety Net as the largest hacker training site in China, which openly recruited members and disseminated hacker techniques through lessons, trojan software and online forum communications.

Since it was established in 2005, the site had recruited more than 12,000 VIP members and collected more than 7 million yuan in membership fees. More than 170,000 people registered for free membership.

A 20-year-old college student who registered with three different hacker training sites said a hacker training course costs from 100 to 2,000 yuan.

“Basically students were told how to steal accounts and use trojan programs. Sometimes trainers show us how to write programs,” he said.

China CERT organization (via Mingpao) estimated that the hacking business across the country had a 10 billion yuan (US1.3 billion) turn over last year. Hackers earn their income by writing program upgrade and implanting Trojan software into computers for stealing information.

The Supreme Court will soon weigh in for the first time on the permissible scope of employer monitoring of employees' electronic communications. Such monitoring activity raises many issues that remain the subject of uncertainty in this developing area of the law. Law.com reports.

The case under consideration by the Court, Ontario v. Quon, arises in the context of government employees, who are protected from unreasonable searches by the Fourth Amendment. Private-sector employees have no such constitutional protection. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court's forthcoming ruling will likely have implications for private employers who face employee claims alleging an invasion of their common-law privacy rights.

Read full article.

American teenagers send an average of 10 text messages per hour they are not in school or sleeping, according to research by The Nielsen Company, reports Marketing Vox.

.

Nielsen predicts overall text message usage will grow as the heavy text messaging population ages and entices the older generations to text with them in order to stay in contact with them. The average text message number has increased every year, but the huge room for growth that is still remaining has been underestimated given the penchant for texting among the 17 and under segment.

.

The German government declared its intention to not continue with the Internet filtering law which was passed in 2009 to block child pornography online.

Since the former government, made up of a coalition of Germany´s two biggest parties, the social democratic SPD and the conservative CDU, passed the law in June/July 2009, it remained a controversially discussed topic in Germany. Especially civil society groups including the Internet community criticized the then Minister of Family Ursula von der Leyen for using child porn as an excuse to create a structure of online censorship.

An online petition set up in 2009 postulating the cancellation of the law-making process was signed by more than 130.000 people, making it the biggest online petition in Germany. Due to the controversial discussion about the law, President Koehler refused to sign it so far, for which reason it did not come into effect.

Another factor to inhibit the law was the national election in September 2009 after which a new coalition of the conservative CDU and the liberal FDP formed the current ruling government. During the negotiations between the two parties the FDP made clear that it did not support the law how it was passed the year before. However, to form a coalition, the CDU agreed to wait another year until the law could be implemented.

During the last months after the elections the new government discussed (mostly internal) how to solve the conflict between the two ruling parties regarding this issue. In February 2010 the German magazine Spiegel published the government´s new purpose to not block child porn websites but to delete them, a decision which is supported by many critics of the 2009-law. For this reason the ruling coalition is planning to develop a new law in the coming months which will concentrate on deleting instead of blocking.

Spotted on MIT Technology Review, a study of reciprocity between mobile phone users reveals surprising insights about the flow of information in society.

Text messages that urged people to murder and then burn their victims' bodies helped stoke inter-religious violence in central Nigeria that killed hundreds of people last week, police and rights activists said on Tuesday. iAfrica reports.

Rights activists have identified at least 145 texts that circulated on mobile phones in the central city of Jos, the epicentre of four days of Muslim-Christian clashes that authorities said killed 326 people.

"The messages helped escalate the violence in Jos in that some of them instructed people on how to kill, dispose of and burn bodies," said leading rights activist Shehu Sani.

Read full article.

Spotted on Switched, a thought provoking and well documented article by GQ's Christopher Ketcham on the potential dangers of cell-phone radiation.

The lack of a scientific consensus doesn't spring from the difficulty of observing subtle shifts in biochemistry, or from maintaining viable documentation of the long-term effects. Instead, Ketcham, and his sources, most notably neuroscientist Allan Frey, accuse both the communications industry and the Defense Department of actively covering up the truth, and exerting influence over government agencies and the scientific community here in the U.S.

More in Switched and full GQ article.

On January 24th, 2010, Libya Telecom and Technology (LTT) has blocked access to the popular video sharing website Youtube and to several Libyans based abroad political and independent websites such as Libya Al Youm, Al Manara, Jeel Libya, Akhbar Libya,and Libya Al Mostakbal.

And while Google didn't confirm the ban of it's service in Libya, the Libyan al-Manara newspaper reported, citing an informed source in the LLT, that the ban is temporary and was meant “to ease pressure on the Network by the users of the website [Youtube] inside Libya“.

However, and according to Human Rights Watch it seems that Youtube was blocked after videos of family members of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and of demonstrations in Benghazi by families of prisoners who were killed in Abu Salim prison in 1996, were published on the video sharing website.

The move has worried Libyan bloggers who fear that the ban will be expanded to include their personal blogs. Some Facebook groups, like “We want YouTube back in Libya“, have been set up to protest the ban and provide instructions for how to use proxy servers to bypass it.

• More employers use social media | The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, PA
  Companies are using social for hiring.
• Super Bowl ads are enhanced with social media | HULIQ
  Social media moves into superbowl ads
• Restaurants turn to Twitter in D.C. snowstorm - Washington Business Journal:
• How To Make An Awesome Corporate Blog
  How to make an awesome corporate blog - highlights social media's move from communications to the heart of operations!

Sunday evening [7th February 2010] Youtube.com started facing intermittent reports of irregular inaccessibility across various ISP's in Pakistan. It initially started off with a simple white page displaying the word “This Site is Restricted” throughout the Youtube domain which were reported widely on Herdict Web, roughly displaying that the site-wide inaccessibility lasted for about an hour but after that everything seemed to have been recovered back to normal.

Instead it was then reported that the Internet governing body Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, which monitors internet access from Pakistan has placed a URL-specific ban on one particular video in which the President of Pakistan Mr. Asif Ali Zardari is seen to deliver a very forceful and curt “Shut-up” to some participant at the rally he was addressing a rally barely a few weeks back.

It must be noted that Mr. Zardari actually says in Urdu

“What has happened to this democracy ……. Shut Up”

Many Pakistanis would find this as a hilarious coincidence coming from a infamous corrupt leader who has a quite a large number of corruption cases outstanding against him. In 2007, his wife Benazir Bhutto was assassinated after which Mr. Zardari successfully hijacked her party and nudged his way into the power corridors in Pakistan and land up in the Presidency. All this was only possible as he negotiated a compromise with the then President of Pakistan, General Pervaiz Musharraf by fabricating an illegal constitutional order [NRO - National Reconciliatory Ordinance] which pardoned him of all his corruption cases

Link to the Blocked Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzuHD5×1fEU [a few other variants have also been blocked]

Sources analyzing this recent censorship attempts suggest that the PTA engineers were yet again testing & fine tuning the URL-block list as they slowly nudged these videos inaccessible to Pakistani, this risky trial and error has been the hallmark of the very same PTA engineers who in February 2008 masterminded [accidentally] to knock out the entire youtube.com network as then PTA tried to block a certain election vote rigging video ending up to misconfiguring the DNS records of Youtube resulting an serious outage world wide for a good few hours before youtube scrambled to fix the errors

Political analysts believe this recent run of censorship is more a knee-jerk reaction by the present rulers of the country as they are facing pressure from a number of areas, more specifically the previously side-lined corruption cases that they had in 2008 nudged away by some illegal constitutional reforms, to get themselves elected have been reopened for a detailed investigation by the Supreme Court of Pakistan which as done away with the various constitutional reforms bringing at stake their appointment to these high-level offices

In 2008 Google launched the first Android smartphone, taking a bold step away from the safe and wonderful world of the ‘web’ into the universe of making ‘real things.’ I admit to being a little confounded by this move at the time, feeling that perhaps the masters of the internet were straying too far from the core business: online search.

The launch of the Nexus One in 2010, along with the surging popularity of the iPhone and other smartphones, made clear that Google’s original move was less about the devices, as it was about accelerating the adoption of internet portability. The smartphones served mostly as delivery devices; untethering the internet from the constraints of a desk or a lap – and placing it firmly in the palm of your hand! This is a profound shift. A shift that serves a dual role of opening up an exciting new ‘internet economy,’ at the same time deepening and enriching the online social networks that form the bedrock of effective social media campaigns.

Having the ‘internet in the palm of your hands’ is a giant step forward. It means that your social networks are ever-present. Whether it’s a fellow employee in the next booth, a neighbor, grandma in another state, your alumni association or an organization doing good work on your behalf in another country – they are always within reach. In your palm, pocket or pocket book.

For the hard-nosed who forgo flowery language for the stubborn bottom line, the measure of the burgeoning ‘portable internet economy’ is perhaps best assessed by the market valuation of these mobile internet delivery devices:

• On the day of the Nexus One’s launch, Google’s market cap rose by a staggering $12 bill and it’s total lifetime valuation stands at $20bill

• The iPhone accounts for around 50% of a apple’s market cap of around $200bill

While these figures price in hardware it’s clear from below that the bulk of that value derives from the ‘portable internet economy’ that these devices deliver.

• Still Counting? 27 More Websites Opened in Xinjiang | Xinjiang: Far West China
  The internet in Xinjiang opens up a little bit… but as a constrained, whitelisted network. Is this the shape of things to come? Or specific to one of the more restive corners of China?
  (tags: internet censorship xinjiang china whitelist freespeech)
• Born Poor? | Santa Fe Reporter
  Interesting overview of Economist Sam Bowles on the need for American economic theory to consider inequality and build strategies that lessen it, otherwise we'll waste money on sectors of the economy which essentially exist to maintain economically unfair structures
  (tags: economics capitalism society development education research poverty labor economy markets employment inequality bowles)
• Is ChatRoulette the Future of the Internet or Its Distant Past? — New York Magazine
  What does a webchat service that randomly pairs you with other individuals tell you about the Internet? Or humanity as a whole? A cautionary tale, perhaps, about trying to engineer a very simple form of serendipity
  (tags: internet technology culture video community chat interactive chatroulette webcam serendipity random)
• Democratic, but dangerous too: how the web changed our world | Technology | The Observer
  Aleks Krotoski is presenting a history of the Internet that worries about the implications of technologies that allow us to "become our demographic" rather than differentiate ourselves as individuals. Some interesting quotes in this short description on insularity and extremism.
  (tags: socialmedia media internet technology cyberutopianism xenophilia serendipity sorting)

Text messaging and mobile marketing companyTxT2Look has created a text message alert service and mobile website for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics beginning on February 12.

By sending the text message OLYMPICS to 77788, anyone in Canada can get instant real time alerts sent to their mobile phone. They can then choose to receive alerts for any of three categories including Canadian medals, gold medals for all countries or game by game results for Team Canada men's hockey.

People can also access the alerts by logging onto the mobile website with their phones at www.TxT2Look.com/Olympics. And a third feature of the service, people can text CANADA, GOLD or HOCKEY to 77788 at anytime to receive instant results.

[via Press release]

Global text messaging company Clickatell has reportedly announced that with its goal to provide relief to earthquake victims in Haiti, it is going to extend its free SMS service to organizations offering aid there.

According to Pieter de Villiers, CEO at Clickatell, people in Haiti are showing tremendous courage and determination and the company is seeing SMS play a significant role in scaling the efforts of the people on the ground and around the world.

Villiers noted that Clickatell invites relief agencies to make use of its SMS Gateway into Haiti and offer such services for the remainder of February as a small contribution on behalf of Clickatell and its staff.

[via TMCNet]

Power supply company BSES Yamuna has launched a new service for East New Delhi residents: Consumers can just send an SMS for complaints regarding a supply outage or voltage fluctuations. And they will get feedback as soon as possible. The Times of India reports.

... The move comes at a time when the regulator is strongly contemplating making the discoms' call centres toll-free. Many consumers complained they were stuck on the phone for long durations to make any kind of complaints, and along with power supply problems, they often end up with hefty phone bills too. Another common complaint is that sometimes no one answers at the call centre.

Read full article. Image from the BBC.

In late January, on the same day as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech on Net freedom, open source community SourceForge blocked access to users from Sudan, Syria, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, in an effort to keep in line with U.S. Treasury export restrictions on those countries.

Ordinary netizens were outraged, and Syrian users fought back, blogging about the restrictions and calling for entrepreneurship in the community. Now, two weeks later, SourceForge has announced a change in restrictions that would allow greater autonomy for projects hosted on the site. On their official blog, SourceForge directors explained:

Our action provoked a strong, angry reaction from those it affected and from the community at large. But even before we heard your cries of outrage, we were looking for reasonable alternatives – and we believe that we’ve found one.

We have no way of knowing exactly which projects should trigger a block. But each project’s leadership is positioned to make such determination – so we’ve placed that power in their hands.

Beginning now, every project admin can click on Develop -> Project Admin -> Project Settings to find a new section called Export Control. By default, we’ve ticked the more restrictive setting. If you conclude that your project is *not* subject to export regulations, or any other related prohibitions, you may now tick the other check mark and click Update. After that, all users will be able to download your project files as they did before last month’s change.

We at SourceForge are fully committed to the ideals of free and open source software, including the principle of free exchange of information. We recognize that, for some people, the recent site changes called into question whether your support of us is justified. The changes that we deployed today are intended to empower our projects and reward your continued trust.

It remains to be seen how the new strategy will affect SourceForge users, or how many projects will choose to turn off the restrictions, but for now, users are happy to have regained access to the site.

In 2008, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority blocked YouTube in what was said to be a reaction to a trailer of Geert Wilder's film "Fitna" hosted on the video-sharing site. The ban was reversed soon afterward, and Pakistani netizens have enjoyed unfettered access to YouTube since.

On Sunday, however, the Pakistani Twitterverse began complaining that YouTube had become inaccessible.

The possible block came after a video of Pakistani President Asif Zardari, in which Zardari tells an unruly audience member to "shut up," was posted on YouTube. After an hour or so, YouTube was once again accessible, save for a dozen or so videos that showed the now-infamous clip of Zardari.

Pakistani blogger (and dentist) Teeth Maestro posted about the incident; one commenter noted that despite the blocking of several videos, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority has not succeeded in removing all copies, and that the video is now also available on Facebook.

According to TechRadar, Google is preparing new smartphone translator software that it say will be able to hear speech and translate it instantly.

The software would take the information learned from the company's text translation software, and voice recognition, a feature Google is putting in many smartphones.

It would obviously be basic at first, analysing small segments of speech before translation, but Google believes it would soon be refined with many users, according to Franz Och, Google's head of translation services.

Read full article.

Internet connections are crawling in Iran and text message traffic has been disrupted ahead of planned anti-government protests in that country this week. The timing is raising eyebrows.

[via Mashable]

Sir Alfie Dennen pointed by this tweet to PBS’s Digital Nation Life on the virtual frontier, a 9 chapter, 78 minutes documentary film by Douglas Rushkoff.

Share your thoughts on the Digital Nation Roundtable a place to discuss, even debate, many of the issues raised by the film. The platform will be tackling one subject a month, with some of the most interesting and knowledgeable people in that area.

Within a single generation, digital media and the World Wide Web have transformed virtually every aspect of modern culture, from the way we learn and work to the ways in which we socialize and even conduct war. But is the technology moving faster than we can adapt to it? And is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we’ve gained?

Read here more of the synopsis

Chapter 1: Distracted by everything. M.I.T. students are among the world’s smartest and most wired. They constantly multitask with their tech tools.
Chapter 2: What’s it doing to their brains. Tests given Stanford’s multitaskers yield troubling discoveries. Other research into Net use and the brain raises more questions.
Chapter 3: South Korea’s gaming craze. Some cautionary lessons from a country where Internet addiction has become a health crisis.
Chapter 4: Teaching with technology. Teachers are embracing digital media–’it keeps students engaged; new skills are needed for a new age.’ But is there a catch?
Chapter 5: The dumbest generation? The debate has just begun on wether we are losing as much as we’re gaining in 24/7 wired world.Chapter
Chapter 6: Relationships. Millions of people are inhabitating the Net as it were a real place, satisfying the urge to connect to others in online games, virtual worlds.
Chapter 7: Virtual worlds. Second life offers a totally new reality for humans, says it’s creator–and IBM has begun shifting it’s meetings into this virtual space.
Chapter 8: Can virtual experience change us? The U.S. military is using virtual spaces for PTSD therapy and for flying drones in Iraq while based in a room in Nevada.
Chapter 9: Where are we headed? A school is organized around learning through video games–may be it’s students are getting something we are’nt yet able to measure or recognize.

Alfie commented on Twitter: “The piece on internet addiction in South Korea is at once funny and profound”

The snowball fight in the picture here (AP Scott Applewhite) is from an AP story reporting:

Hundreds of people turn up for a massive snowball fight in DuPont Circle in Washington after an intense snowfall blanketed the nation’s capital and much of the Mid Atlantic region, Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010. The snowball fight was promoted on Facebook and other social-networking sites.

As a community service, The Zimbabwean - an international newspaper for Zimbabweans at home and abroad - is offering space in every issue to enable the people to have their say about the new Constitution document that will become the foundation of the new Zimbabwe.

Please SMS your views to +263 913 245 709 – and The Zimbabwean will publish as many as possible in the coming weeks.

According to China Daily, an official from the Supreme People's Court clarified Friday that the crackdown on pornography on mobile phones targets those who "sext" to the public, not amorous couples who text each other.

Chen Guoiqing, director of the research center of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, said the law punishes those who spread pornography "in public" and "in serious cases". The director added that "serious cases" referrs to a large quantity of texting and receivers.

Related: - Chinese government launches crackdown against online and cell phone porn industry

In part one and part two I started a series of instructional screencasts that get very practical about my idea of mindful infotention — combining technical skills with mental attitudes to not just cope but manage today’s overwhelming flows of information. Now I’ve finished part three. You could go through these screencasts step-by-step to set up your own dashboards, radars, and filters.

The Chicago Tribune reports that after a four year absence from advertising on the Super Bowl, Motorola - from second largest phone manufacturer in the world, in 2006, to fifth in 2009 - is back in the game.

The company has put an ambitious turnaround strategy in place, hoping to reposition itself as a maker of smart phones as it releases 20 such devices this year, with nearly all of them powered by Google's Android operating system.

The Super Bowl ad is an important part of the turnaround strategy.

You can view teaser ad here.

Read full article.

Texas Tech issued a release late Friday regarding a self-reported violation of NCAA rules in July involving impermissible text messages to recruits of three sports, including football. Sports ESPN reports.

The school said the violations were discovered during a routine review by the athletic department of cell-phone records of Texas Tech coaches.

NCAA rules bar the sending of text messages to prospective athletes until after a student has signed a national letter of intent with the university. Aside from football, the violations also occurred in softball and men's golf. Many of the self-imposed penalties have been fulfilled, the school said.

Read full article.

Related:

-- NCAA approves ban on text messaging

-- Coaches turn to text messaging to woo recruits

-- College Coaches are using twitter to reach recruits

State Rep. Peter Koutoujian said the House will work quickly to close a legal loophole that led the state’s high court Friday to overturn the conviction of man accused of sending sexually explicit messages to a minor. The Daily News Tribune reports.

Matthew Zubiel of Beverly was convicted in 2007 of attempting to disseminate harmful material to a minor after being arrested in Marshfield the year before.

Authorities said Zubiel thought he was going to meet a 13-year-old girl for sex after sending her sexually explicit instant messages.

The girl was really a Plymouth County Deputy Sheriff.

Zubiel's attorney argued instant messages were not illegal because state law bans only printed material, handwritten or "visual representations”, but not typewritten words.

The Supreme Judicial Court agreed, and in a unanimous decision Friday said only the Legislature could expand the law to include instant messaging.

The Telegraph reports that though cell phone networks were up and working within days in earth shaken Haiti, the crucial issue for many was not being unable to communicate, it was being able to keep their phones charged.

Some entrepreneurs immediately saw a business opportunity – thousands were prepared to pay for 15 minutes connected to a car battery to recharge their mobiles.

Dutch mobile phone firm Intivation, however, has long realised that its solar powered handsets were a solution to the problems of Haiti’s unreliable infrastructure. Mobile phones that use this technology have been deployed worldwide since 2009, predominantly in regions that do not have reliable electricity girds. Over half a million of these devices have been sold worldwide in the last six months. And Intivation donated 1,000 of its solar-powered handset to the earthquake-stricken Caribbean country.

Read full article.

Siri Assistant is a new iPhone app that helps people get things done by combining intelligent voice recognition with hooks into tons of different web services, making it easy for people to use their mobile devices to get things done.

Better wear a raincoat today." The advice came in a message on my iPhone from my dutiful new virtual personal assistant Siri. Moments before, I'd spoken into the phone and asked, "what is the weather today?" Siri delivered the advice along with a forecast and radar map.

Read full reviews in Mashable and USA Today.

• Smartphones Are Selling Like Crazy
  The mass adoption of smartphones indicate the 'brave new world' of the internet.

Apple has told developers it will not accept iPhone applications that use the smartphone's global positioning system to distribute location-based advertising. Information Week reports.

The company did not give a reason for the ban, but in an announcement posted Wednesday on the iPhone Dev Center, it said that applications with features based on an iPhone user's location must provide "beneficial information."

According to GSM Association Facebook accounts for nearly half of all the time people in the UK spend going online using their phones.

[via the BBC]

Wells Fargo & Company announced today that text banking -- a safe and easy way to stay on top of account information -- is now accessible to all customers including those who have yet to enroll in Wells Fargo Online Banking.

Through its research, Wells Fargo learned that customers appreciate being able to check their current available account balances while they are "on the go." A text banking request to Wells Fargo can quickly provide customers with their current available account balances*, transaction history, credit card payment information, and the address of the nearest Wells Fargo ATM.

[via MarketWatch]

According to French daily Le Monde, the much written about and controversial iMussolini app containing dictator Benito Mussolini's biography, speeches and video footage, has been removed from the app store.

Not because of pressure from Jewish groups, nor from remorse on the part of it's developper Luigi Marino, but because Marino received legal threats by film institute Cinecitta Luce for copyright violations.

• Army's virtual recruiter set to deploy to social media - Spokesman.com - Feb. 3, 2010
  U.S. Army adopting social media: Army's joined to use social media for recruiting

Nokia's Ovi Maps have been downloaded 1.4m times overall since the free application became available on January 21 2010, the company claims. The BBC reports.

It has been most popular in China, Italy, the UK, Germany and Spain The service provides different direction information for drivers and pedestrians in 74 countries and 46 different languages.

"We're averaging a download a second, 24 hours a day," said Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's executive vice president.

Read full article.

A start-up called Truth On Call lets reporters, financial analysts, pharmaceutical executives and, soon, patients, text questions to a group of doctors.

Using SMS Technology, Truth On Call offers industry members the opportunity to ask thousands of physicians questions by text message and receive an answer within minutes. Physicians can be selected by specialty and other characteristics.

For every question answered, physicians receive $10 payable to themselves or to a charity of their choosing.

[via Bits Blog]

A new text messaging campaign in the US aims to curb infant mortality by texting health tips to pregnant moms.

text4baby, is the first free campaign, health education program in the U.S. to harness the reach of mobile phones, according to its sponsors, which include Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, WellPoint and CareFirst BlueCross and Blue Shield.

Wireless carriers including AT&T, Verizon and Sprint have agreed to waive all fees for receiving the texts.

Organizers say texting is an effective means of delivering wellness tips because 90 percent of people in the U.S. have cell phones.

Under the new service, mothers-to-be who text "BABY" to 511411 will receive weekly text messages, timed to their due date or their baby's birth date. The messages, which have been vetted by government and nonprofit health experts, deal with nutrition, immunization and birth defect prevention, among other topics. The messages will continue through the baby's first birthday.

[via ABC News and Press release.

• Social Media and Young Adults | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project
  The Pew Research center's research on social media for young adults
• SlideShare Offers Branded Channels To Businesses
  Slideshare is offering organizations branded channels going forward; the online slideshow is the 'YouTube' of slideshows

I started to think about all the campaign meetings and discussions I have been in over the years. Groups are great and they share lots of data including proposals, plans, budgets, etc. However, I am usually very hungry to sit down with the campaign team to talk about the vision and where things are going. What am I looking for during these meetings? Why does most the literature and information in proposals not give online organizers enough to chew on? What do I really want before I can sit down and develop the best advocacy network strategy for a group or client? These are not in order. Here is a list of things I like to get my head around before I get into thinking about the online strategy. Most of these are obvious but some are driven by what makes a network function. What is the campaign trying to do? What is success? How do the policy team/ campaign team think it will be done? Who is the target audience? Who are the influencers that the online strategy must engage to succeed? What services would be most valuable to them in their own work? Where are the turf wars...

Time for part two of my series on iPhone development basics (you can find part one on the EchoDitto Labs blog). Last time, I gave some tips on writing settings to a binary file using Apple's Foundation Library. This time I'll show you how to retrieve those settings -- either from a cached version of the property list or from the filesystem itself. As with the first article, let's dive in head first with some code.

First of all, you'll want to add a static NSDictionary member to your settings data controller class for storing the cached settings.

In your .h file:

NSDictionary *cachedSettings;
@property(nonatomic, retain) NSDictionary *cachedSettings;

In your .m file:

static NSDictionary *cachedSettings;
@synthesize cachedSettings;

Here's the loadSettings function. As you can see, I've implemented it as a class method -- there's really no reason to treat your settings data controller as anything other than a singleton with some class methods. Some argue against using singletons in Objective C. In most cases, I could be persuaded to agree; however, app-wide settings don't really make any sense implemented as anything except as global variables, and singletons are essentially the OOP equivalent of globals. I'd love if someone wanted to discuss this in a comment thread, however.

+ (NSDictionary *)loadSettings
{
if (cachedSettings == nil) {
NSArray *dirArray = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory,
NSUserDomainMask,
YES);

NSString *path = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/settings.bin", [dirArray objectAtIndex:0]];
NSData *settings = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:path];

if (settings != nil) {
NSDictionary *dict = (NSDictionary *)[NSPropertyListSerialization
propertyListFromData:settings
mutabilityOption:0
format:nil
errorDescription:nil];

if (dict == nil)
NSLog(@"Error in loadSettings");

cachedSettings = [dict copy];

return dict;
}

return nil;
}
else {
return cachedSettings;
}
}

The outermost if block is the heart of our caching. Essentially, if cachedSettings contains data, loadSettings simply returns that data. Otherwise, it loads data out of the filesystem in a pattern much like the save function. Again, NSData does the file I/O for us. Cocoa is made of magic pixie dust. If the file read goes well, we unserialize the binary data stream into an NSDictionary and return that dictionary.

Next, let's revisit the save function I provided last time -- albeit with a minor modification to accommodate for caching.

+ (BOOL) saveSettings:(NSString *)username password:(NSString *)password
{
NSArray *dirArray = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory,
NSUserDomainMask,
YES);

NSString *path = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/settings.bin", [dirArray objectAtIndex:0]];
NSDictionary *dict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:username, @"username", password, @"password", nil];

if (cachedSettings != nil) [cachedSettings release];
cachedSettings = [dict copy];

NSData *data = [NSPropertyListSerialization dataFromPropertyList:dict format:NSPropertyListBinaryFormat_v1_0 errorDescription:nil];

if (data == nil) {
NSLog(@"Error in SettingsDataController saveSettings");
return NO;
}

NSLog(@"Writing to path: %@", path);

if ([data writeToFile:path options:NSAtomicWrite error:nil] == NO) {
NSLog(@"writeToFile error");
return NO;
}

NSLog(@"writeToFile success");
return YES;
}

Notice lines 4 and 5 of saveSettings:password:.

if (cachedSettings != nil) [cachedSettings release];
cachedSettings = [dict copy];

All we're doing here is checking if a cached version of the settings NSDictionary exists. If so, we release that memory and then copy in the new version that was saved to disk. By copying in a cached version during the save process, we prevent ever having to read from disk more than once. This is, of course, not much of a performance boost for anything we're doing with our Drupal/iPhone integration project, but it's still a best practice, and it's easy and quick enough to implement that there's no good excuse for omitting it.

You could presumably simply set the cachedSettings pointer to the NSDictionary object, rather than memcpying it over. That would probably align better with best practices. I'm still trying to nail down exactly how to retain and release variables in Objective C, however, and I went with the copy because I was more interested in building out new functionality than debugging BAD_ACCESS errors. Again, I'd love a little discussion in a comment thread below.

The OpenNet Initiative is proud to release its 2009 Year in Review, a look into instances of filtering, surveillance, and information warfare around the world in 2009.

The events of 2009 demonstrated a global rise in third-generation Internet controls. Within the first two weeks of January 2009, both Pakistan and Thailand had ordered the filtering of several Web sites, and Germany announced plans to filter certain types of pornography, garnering outrage from free speech activists. By mid-year, the events surrounding the elections in Iran had taken center stage, prompting Iranian authorities to crack down on Internet use and sparking outrage throughout the world, which then rippled through social media.

The OpenNet Initiative estimates that at the end of 2009, 32% of all Internet users were accessing a filtered version of the Internet.

Seen on TheNextWeb.com By Jamie Riddell
February 3, 2010

Twitter access in Mexico may soon be restricted if plans by the Mexican Revolutionary Democratic Party become law. The plan, drafted by republican and PDR member Nazario Norberto hopes to restrict Twitter usage in an attempt to cut down on crime.

From sharing the location of drunk driving checkpoints to more serious usage of Twitter by drug cartels, Norberto believes that restricting to access to Twitter will help reduce crime and create a “cybernetic police force” that will help in all areas of crime reduction.
Like many nations, Mexico is concerned that the speed of information sharing across these social networks is helping fuel criminals who are staying once step ahead of the police forces. The recent revenge attack on a Marine, part of a team responsible for killing one of Mexico’s most wanted drug lords, was linked to Facebook due to the speed of attack and detail of the location.

If passed, the law would be similar to the Spanish Bill which affords judges the power to shut down sites that are helping people break the law. One would assume the Mexican authorities are already monitoring social networks much like we have in the UK. Whilst Twitter is a site, its permeation run deep across the Internet so it will harder to stop or the ban would have to extend to all social networks.

The bill is still in draft stage, with no word on a date for submission.

Tags: Cartels, Drugs, Free Speech, Mexico, News, twitter

Januray 2010- In the Philippines, the National Bureau of Investigation filed a libel complaint against blogger Ella Ganda upon the request of former Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Esperanza Cabral, over a blog post, published on October 21, 2009, that exposed stockpiles of unprocessed relief goods intended for victims of supertyphoon Ketsana. Blogger Ella claimed that “employees of the Department of Social Welfare and Development had hoarded relief goods that were donated for the victims of the devastating Tropical Storm “Ondoy” (Ketsana) and Typhoon “Pepeng” (Parma)”.

In her blog post Ella also posted “photos of imported blankets and mats supposedly donated by foreign agencies stored in the alleged DSWD warehouse”.

According to the Inquirer.net, the libel case against Ella was “for claiming that relief goods were left to rot in a government agency warehouse“.

On her blog, Ella reacted by saying:

It was never my intention to villify Sec. Cabral, or the good people at the DSWD. My reaction at the sight of tons of relief goods which were apparently not moving was one of anger, of helplessness and dismay.

The Breaking Borders Award is a new prize created by Google and Global Voices and supported by Thomson Reuters to honor outstanding web projects initiated by individuals or groups that demonstrate courage, energy and resourcefulness in using the Internet to promote freedom of expression.

We are proud to announce our jury members for the award. The jury is drawn from experts and leaders in the freedom of expression, journalism, digital activism, and technology sectors, and includes representatives from around the world. Members of the jury are:

Sheila Coronel, Director, Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Jose Roberto de Toledo, Projects and Training Coordinator, Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism (ABRAJI); Director, PrimaPagina
Edetaen Ojo, Convenor, International Freedom of Expression Exchange, Executive Director, Media Rights Agenda
Dean Wright, Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards, Reuters
Rebecca MacKinnon, Co-Founder, Global Voices; Visiting Fellow, Princeton University Center for Information Technology
Robert Boorstin, Director, Public Policy, Google

The Breaking Borders Award is open to people of all nationalities. Winners will be selected by a panel of experts in the field of freedom of expression. A cash prize of $10,000 will be awarded in each of three areas:

1. Advocacy, given to an activist or group that has used online tools to promote free expression or encourage political change
2. Technology, given to an individual or group that has created an important tool that enables free expression and expands access to information
3. Policy, given to a policy maker, government official or NGO leader who has made a notable contribution in the field

Nominations for and additional information about the Breaking Borders Award can be submitted at http://breakingborders.net and close on February 15, 2010.

Global voices is very excited to be associated with this event. Contact us at nomination@breakingborders.net with any questions.

A new report by Juniper Research - titled Mobile Ticketing Applications & Markets - predicts cell phones will replace traditional paper tickets for everything from cinemas to air travel. The study also said airlines and bus and train operators are developing a range of new mobile tickets that will work via text messages, bar codes or downloadable applications.

Read full article in The Telegraph and Juniper Research Report.

Japanese phones used to be years ahead of anything we had here in Europe and decades ahead of those in the US, but not any more. The latest US and European smartphones are super-slick devices with gorgeous user interfaces, while the latest Japanese phones are almost the exact opposite.

[via Mobile Mentalism]

Toshiba is developing new tech that will supposedly make your cell phone function like a secretary. It notices behavioral patterns in users and does things like display train schedules, recommend nearby restaurants, and learn the lifestyle of its owner with frequent usage.

[via Tokyomango]

Related:

-- What your cell phone knows about you

-- Want to know who your friends are? Ask your cell phone

Interesting, from arstechnica:

Financial firms that sell investment products have long been restricted in how they speak about or present those products to customers and potential customers. But social networking sites, where the line between personal and professional speech is blurred, present huge problems for regulators.

Read full article.

• Social Media Trumps Super Bowl Commercials in Pepsi's Latest Advertising Campaigns -- TAMPA, Fla., Feb. 2 /PRNewswire/ --
  This highlights the ascendency of social media into marketing/sales departments!
• Grammy Ratings Surge; Did Social Media Play a Role?
  Highlights the role of social media during a national social/cultural event
• San Francisco — Social Media Week
  Social Media Week, San Franscisco, 1st - 5th February 2010. Livestream: http://socialmediaweek.org/sanfrancisco/livestream/

Organizing for America (OFA), a project of the Democratic National Committee that carries on the work of the Obama presidential campaign, launched a text last night in connection with an upcoming event called 'A Conversation with the President.'

In line with the continuing push for transparency -- embodied Monday by the YouTube interview with the President featuring questions submitted by the public and voted up in Google Moderate -- this event, scheduled to happen Thursday at 5:45, features questions from the public.

The twist this time is that people can submit questions by text. Active subscribers to the Barack Obama SMS program -- which is at 62262 -- received this message explaining how to send the President a question:

Join us for a Conversation with the President on Thurs at 5:45pm EST live at BarackObama.com. To submit a question, reply ASK with your NAME, STATE & question.

OFA staff will continue to gather questions through some time Thursday before the event gets underway.

The organisers of the Hever Castle Triathlon successfully used text messaging as part of their communications strategy to keep competitors informed about race details and results. In addition, the mobile channel filled the gap between online and traditional promotions by providing a direct means of marketing to participants.

For the Hever Castle Triathlon, Telemark created marketing exposure for the event via industrybased online media, in triathlon focused print media, through guerrilla marketing, leafleting and signage in the surrounding areas, as well as building awareness through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Alongside these traditional and digital promotional strategies, Telemark partnered with BulkSMS.com to deliver text messages for the Hever Castle Triathlon. BulkSMS.com’s Web to SMS messaging platform allowed for application-to-person messaging and was used to engage directly with competitors. Texts were delivered to competitors’ mobile phones and provided time critical event logistics information and post-event communications.

The mobile channel played a key role in extending the event organiser’s ability to interact with race participants and went far in the professional running of the triathlon by Telemark.

According to Tristan King commercial manager of Telemark, “We found that between online advertising and the website, the BulkSMS.com messaging solution filled in the gaps in our marketing and communications strategy.”

According to Southern Metropolis' report on 18 Jan 2010, more than 100 thousand websites have been shut down in China since the white list policy has come into effect in December 2009. Self employed individuals who tried to maintain their business online were affected the most.

The internet cleaning was jointly launched by the Ministry of Information Industry Technology (MIIT), Public Security Bureau, Culture Bureau and the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) under the pretext of anti-vulgarity campaign. In September 2009, SARFT started cleaning up audio-visual websites by demanding them to apply for license, as a result more than 530 video websites had been shut down. After the license crack down, SARFT continued to clean up the internet in November 2009 by making use of the anti-vugarity campaign. Most of the BT websites were gone and among one of them is BT China which had been online for six years and finally shut down in December 2009.

On 8 of December 2009, a total of 9 governmental departments, including International Communication Office of CCP and Public Security Bureau, held a tele-conference and decided to launch a campaign against internet and mobile phone's pornographic information between December 2009 and May 2010.

Chinese netizens said this is the most hard-handed repression of the Internet in the history.

The official data released by the Public Security Bureau shows that in 2009 the Bureau had shut down more than 9000 websites and issued warning 11 thousands internet operation unit. 6500 servers had been either suspended or shut down while 6 internet service providers and 8 internet advertisement service providers had their license suspended.

On 14 December 2009, CNNIC banned individual from registering cn domain name and three major telecoms agreed to filter illegal SMS content. It is estimated that more than 1 million individuals are affected by the CNNIC's new policy and more than 100 thousands websites were forced to shut down by the data center.

In order to get a proper license for BBS kind of websites, an individual needs to attain the Internet Content Provider license and the pre-condition of such license is to have a company registered with 1 million yuan capital. It implies that the new policy will make internet self-employed business impossible.

As a result of the CNNIC's policy, there is a sudden grow of “.com” registration from China. Between December 7-14 2009, there were more than 180 thousand “.cm” registration from China, the increase compared to the same period last year is up to 1300%. Moreover, a large number of websites were migrated out of China.

The ease, speed, and relatively low cost of texting has made it an ideal tool for grassroots organization. It has proven particularly useful in the movement for immigration reform, as many activists and beneficiaries living illegally in the U.S. have limited access to tools such as the Internet. Switched reports via The Huffington Post.

The Center for Community Change organized the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM), a group dedicated to giving voice to those who are often not free to come forward themselves. The most important tool in FIRM's arsenal has been a text messaging network.

Read full article.

The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Tuesday released the results of a comprehensive study into the economic value of mobile phone use in Africa, particularly in the banking sector. Afrique en Ligne reports.

The study, undertaken by three academics, examined how mobile phones had 'revolutionised' e-commerce in Senegal, Kenya and South Africa, and the economic impact this has had on the rural populations in the three countries.

Read full article.