· March, 2011

Stories about Technology from March, 2011

China: The Interrogation (A Tale of AI and Revolution)

  31 March 2011

Stainless Steel Mouse, aka Liu Di, has seen many of her peers arrested or disappeared over the past several weeks. Looking at the unusual way in which China's failed Jasmine Revolution began, she has imagined a scenario which mixes fact with fiction.

Nigeria: Buhari leads in mock online polls

  31 March 2011

Nigerian presidential candidate Mohammadu Buhari leads in mock online polls: “There are now several platforms online that allow Nigerians with access to the Internet to vote for their favourite presidential aspirant and share their preference on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.”

Russia: The Most Fierce DDOS Attack On LiveJournal Analyzed

RuNet Echo  31 March 2011

Ilya Dronov, LiveJournal's head of development, told [ru] some details about yesterday's DDOS-attack on LiveJournal, popular blogging platform in Russia. That was the most fierce attack in the history of the platform. Anton Nosik, suggested [ru] that (despite that most of the attacking machines were outside of Russia) the main client...

Bangladesh: Online Payment Options

  30 March 2011

In Bangladesh, Paypal is not available and international online payment/receipt via credit card is restricted, which is a problem for the startups who want to sell products from Bangladesh and receive payment. T solve this problem Hasin at “The Storyteller” writes about merchant account providers, who helps users to charge...

China: Red flag on Wall Street

  30 March 2011

Co-founder of Chinese fund management firm CDH Investments Wang Gongquan stopped by the New York Stock Exchange building today to snap a picture of the flag of the People's Republic of China, flying over Wall Street to mark popular Chinese online security company Qihoo 360 Technology‘s IPO. Wang was mocked...

Colombia: Fractal, a Sci-Fi event in Medellín

  30 March 2011

Juan Diego Gómez posts in his blog about Fractal'11, an event about fiction, art, science and technology that will take place in Medellín, Colombia, on April 8-9, 2011. Juan Diego introduces [es] some of the speakers: awarded Science Fiction writer Kij Johnson (@kijjohnson), cyborg anthropologist Amber Case (@caseorganic), researcher Johanna...

Russia: Mapping Bribery Online

RuNet Echo  30 March 2011

Anton Nosik shares [ru] a link to RosKomVzyatka (‘Russian Committee for Bribes’), Ushahidi-based platform that allows users to map bribes (both given and taken) anonymously. It's another transparency project after rospil.info, gdecasino.ru, otmenta.ru, and others that crowdsource crime/injustice reporting.

Africa: Coders4Africa

  29 March 2011

Coders 4 Africa is an initiative by several gentlemen of African origin. The initiative aims at developing African software development talent by providing access to free, high quality training in software development.

Lebanon: Ontornet instead of Internet

Frustrated with the very slow internet connection in Lebanon, a group of Lebanese bloggers started a campaign calling it “Ontornet” (“Ontor” in the Lebanese dialect means “wait”) to do something about it. They explained it all in this blog post.

South Korea: Application for Radiation Levels Checkup

  29 March 2011

As minuscule amounts of radioactive iodine and cesium have been detected in South Korean atmosphere, intensifying the already heightened fear over Japan's nuclear crisis, South Korean web developers debuted an Android application enabling citizen to check updated information on radiation levels in the country. Wiki Tree posted [ko] screenshot images...

Russia: 2010 Cyber-Crime Market Research

RuNet Echo  28 March 2011

Group IB, Russian cyber-security research company, publishes [ru] Russian Cyber-Crime Market in 2010 report. According to the research, Russian hackers commit nearly 35 percent of all cyber-crimes. DDOS-attacks (from $90 to $300 per day of attack) are falling in price which makes this method of cyber-warfare more accessible to online...

Barbados: Going on Facebook

  28 March 2011

“I just didn’t like the idea of credit cards. They seemed to be a device for misleading people into a pattern of life they probably wouldn’t have entered, but for the convenience”: B.C. Pires argues it's the “same thing with FaceBook.”

Cuba: Implications of the Alan Gross trial

  28 March 2011

In half-wired, blogger Ellery Biddle analyzes the Alan Gross case and the potential of ICT's in Cuba: “First, who decides what constitutes a crime? While Cuban courts say that Gross committed “acts against the independence or territorial integrity of the state,” Hillary Clinton,  Phillip Crowley and other State Department officials say that...