· July, 2012

Stories about Technology from July, 2012

Hungary: Community News Site Takes On Neglected Fire Hydrants

Faulty and out-of-order fire hydrants made it difficult to control a fire that broke out in the Kutya mountain, close to the town of Nagykovácsi in Hungary. This inspired the founder of a community news site Nagykovácsi.net Dávid Fáber to launch a community-driven data gathering initiative to document all of the town's fire hydrants through his website's registered users.

22 July 2012

Wales: The State of Welsh Language Blogging

In the 1990s, William Owen Roberts, a Welsh author and playwright, remarked that writing in Welsh is akin to "writing on the edge of catastrophe". If that is the case, a Welsh language blogger might be half way off the edge already.

21 July 2012

Tajikistan: Young People Learn to Blog

Matrix [ru], a Central Asian youth TV project focusing on Internet and new technologies, has produced a video [ru] about bloggers in Tajikistan. While few Tajiks presently run blogs, some local organizations...

21 July 2012

Russia: Yaroslavl Court Bans LiveJournal

RuNet Echo

Earlier this week, a Yaroslavl court responded to a request from local police and ordered Internet provider Netis Telekom to shut off access to a handful of websites, including Russia's most popular blogging platform, LiveJournal. As a result, roughly 6,000 subscribers have lost all LJ access.

20 July 2012

Indonesia: Charismatic Entrepreneur Charmed Jakarta Voters

Residents of Jakarta, Indonesia went to the polls to elect a new governor of the country's capital. In a surprising twist, voters supported Joko Widodo, an entrepreneur and mayor of central Java city of Solo. For the first time in Jakarta elections, social networks were recognized as tools that promote voters' education and campaign awareness

19 July 2012

China: Blogger Shorts SINA to 8% Shares Plunge With a Tweet

On July 16, famous Chinese blogger Isaac Mao wrote on Twitter that he would be shorting $SINA everyday, in reaction to SINA Weibo's (a Chinese microblogging platform) deletion of his user account. His message was delivered to investors from all around the world and next day SINA's NASDAQ listed price dropped by 8%.

18 July 2012

Yemen: TEDx Finally in Sanaa!

There is great excitement in Yemen and among netizens that TEDx has reached Sanaa after the license to stage the event was finally obtained on July 13th 2012. Many Yemenis are looking forward to getting the chance to share their dreams, experiences and ideas with each other and the world in December 2012.

17 July 2012

Sri Lanka: News Websites Targeted And Journalists Threatened

Recently the Sri Lankan authorities raided offices of two news websites on allegation of criminal defamation and arrested nine journalists. In another incident the defense secretary threatened an editor of a local newspaper during an interview. Sri Lankan journalists and activists staged a demonstration protesting their repression.

17 July 2012