· March, 2010

Stories about Technology from March, 2010

China: Characters in leaders’ names made sensitive search terms on Google

  25 March 2010

Beginning Wednesday and continuing today, Chinese Internet users have discovered that Google searches containing the Chinese characters for the surnames of China's top leaders (ie. the ‘hu’ [jintao] in carrot, ‘huluobo’) are resulting in a reset connection to the website. Isaac Mao has made a screencast showing how this works.

Guyana: Virtual Love

  24 March 2010

“What a la-la. The I-net become the We-net”: Guyana-Gyal notices that “rosemantic” things have been happening in cyberspace.

Japan: Live Streaming Tokyo Marathon

  24 March 2010

Joseph Tame live streamed his run of the Tokyo Marathon with a hotel room “studio”, multiple live stream channels, Twitter, and GPS uplinks. Here's his full feature post chronicling the successful project.

Africa: Crowdfunding in Africa

  23 March 2010

Erik writes about crowdfunding and seed funding in Africa: “We’re starting to see a few angel investors like Sean Murphy of Chembe Ventures making their way around the continent, but they are not nearly enough to fulfill the capacity of ideas and individuals who need startup capital.”

Kenya: Is Makmende Kenya's first Internet sensation?

  23 March 2010

Is Makmende Kenya's first Internet sensation: “Unless you’ve been offline for the better part of two weeks its Kenya’s first viral Internet sensation, and his name is Makmende! Yes. Makmende is something to smile about! He is Kenya’s first super hero and boy does he rock!”

Is Russia an Enemy of Internet?

RuNet Echo  23 March 2010

The degree of freedom on the Russian Internet is an issue for debates. Some put Russia on the same list of "Internet enemies" with China and Iran. Others strongly oppose this kind of generalization and claim that Russian Internet is the most liberal and unrestricted public sphere in the country.

China: Google.cn migrated to Hong Kong

  23 March 2010

Finally Google has decided to leave China. Soon after the announcement, Google stopped censoring the search result of google.cn by redirecting the site to google.com.hk. In Google's official blog, David Drummond, the corporate's chief legal officer explains that its decision is due to the Chinese government's “non-negotiable legal requirement” in...

China: Singing farewell to Google

  23 March 2010

Google has formally closed its mainland Chinese search engine and rival Baidu will not need long to pick up the slack; nonetheless, former users of Google.cn search braved the cold air to show their support outside the company's Beijing headquarters, singing an anti-Internet censorship protest song while they were at it.

Venezuela: Concerns About Controls on the Internet

  23 March 2010

Debate is heating up in Venezuela after decrees and statements from President Hugo Chávez, who questioned how the Internet is being used in the country. Many are interpreting these statements and policy proposals that the government wants control the Internet in Venezuela.

Bangladesh: Government Websites Hacked

  22 March 2010

Ahamed Bauani informs that twenty district websites of Bangladesh out of sixty four were hacked recently. The blogger suggests that the Bangladesh Government should take the incident seriously and install proper security measures.