· July, 2008

Stories about Technology from July, 2008

Bangladesh gets a ‘Blog-Ban’ scare

  28 July 2008

On 15th of July, Bangla bloggers were disconcerted to find that they could not access Sachalayatan , a popular Bangla blogging platform that focuses on literature and contemporary issues, from within Bangladesh. Those living outside Bangladesh, however, had no problems with accessing the site. In the beginning, people thought it...

China: Bring your own wifi routers with you!

  28 July 2008

Re: exorbitant prices for internet access in Beijing's Olympic Media Village, one writer on Andrew Lih's AndrewLih.com: “I just can’t believe that not only do I have to deal with the Great Firewall of China, but also pay through the nose to use it!”

Kenya: Blogging workshop for marginalized youth

  28 July 2008

Kristina Rosinski, a volunteer at the Undugu Society of Kenya (USK), describes a blogging workshop in which she taught poor and marginalized youth how to blog and post photographs. She links to the blogs and Flickr photostreams of all 17 participants in the workshop.

Malawi: Healthworkers use of Frontline SMS

  28 July 2008

Kiwanja describes some of the initiatives that are using the software Frontline SMS (an collective SMS service for NGOs), such as Josh Nesbit in Malawi who's using it “to drive field communications between a local hospital and its six hundred roaming community health workers (CHWs)”.

Proposal to close Hausa Wikipedia

  28 July 2008

The blog Hausa Online reports that a few days ago a proposal had been made in Wikipedia's discussion pages to delete the Wikipedia in Hausa language, an African Chadic language spoken by more than 24 million people. This comes a few months after the blog Beyond Niamey expressed his concern...

Korea: To Me, a Blog is ___________

  27 July 2008

We all know about the ‘wave’ at sporting events. You stand up and down following strangers the behind or front, or left or right sides around you. Now the ‘blog wave’ is popular in Korea. A blogger or portal site suggests an idea and starts riding the ‘blog wave.’ This...

Macedonia: More on Discrimination Against Gamers

Filip Stojanovski of Razvigor :-) thinks discrimination against Macedonian gamers is part of a bigger problem: “[…] Regardless if a person considers oneself a gamer or not, I think they should become concerned by the pattern of discrimination labeling group by group as abnormal, wasteful, and dangerous even. And this...

Serbia: New Instructions and Law Regulations on Online Privacy

On July 21, Serbia’s Republican Agency for Telecommunications posted a Document of Instructions for Technical Requirements for Subsystems, Devices, Hardware and Installation of Internet Networks on their official web site. This news didn’t go unnoticed yesterday in Serbian blogosphere and internet community, as many bloggers expressed various opinions as well as disapproval because of the potential abuse of users’ privacy.

USA: Longest Walk 2 for Native Americans rights

  25 July 2008

An 8,000-Mile Walk for Native American Rights, Environmental Protection, and to Stop Global Warming reached its destination in Washington, DC. A successful example of community-building and citizen media usage - including first-hand reports and poignant comments.

China: Olympic blog shutdown continues

  24 July 2008

One of China's oldest blog service providers, Sohoxiaobao, has been kept shut down for a week already and looks to stay that way until the Beijing Olympics wrap up in late August.

Russia: Gulag Online

Robert Amsterdam draws attention to an online exhibition on the Soviet Gulag system – created by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in cooperation with Russian human rights organization “Memorial” – and posts a video depicting how arrests were made during the Stalinist era.

New Zealand: Bloggers Union

  23 July 2008

Kiwiblog writes about the newly launched bloggers union that automatically counts any New Zealand bloggers as its member.

China: Fuwatron Toy

  23 July 2008

We've seen vampire Fuwas, life-size Fuwa robots, Fuwa-inspired soft porn, grannies dressed like Fuwas, even a supposed Fuwa curse and, now, a ripoff of the Transformers franchise. h/t @bokane. update: @chinkerfly brings us many more.