· April, 2011

Stories about Technology from April, 2011

South Korea: Search Engine Censorship Claims

  20 April 2011

As South Korea's biggest search engines file an anti-competition charge against Google, net users have started to look back at the various companies' contributions to the Korean net environment. The nation's most visited portal, Naver, has come under particular fire for alleged news screening and censorship of information, along with its monopoly in the field.

Central Asia: Finalists of BarCamp Ideas Market

  20 April 2011

Global Voices has already provided an overview of BarCamp Central Asia, which took place on 15-17 April, 2011 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. In this post we would like to give our readers a closer look at online projects, developed by young bloggers and IT specialists from Central Asia. BarCamp Ideas Market - a special section of the event was dedicated to new ideas and future Internet trends in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

Brazil/Japan: Bridge Blogging Post-Earthquake News

  19 April 2011

“I read a post from a japanese blogger, I found it truly interesting and I decided to translate part of it”, said [pt] Satou Mihoko, who has decided to bridge japanese news to the portuguese speaking  community, following the earthquake. Brazil is home to the largest Japanese population outside of...

Mexico: Felipe Calderon's Cabinet on Twitter

  19 April 2011

In mid-April, the government headed by Felipe Calderon announced with much fanfare that every member of the cabinet was now registered on Twitter, and prepared to deal more directly with the public via social media. The initiative, however, is shadowed by a concurrent report ranking Mexico just 78th out of 133 countries in terms of its effective use of information technology.

Colombia: Teen Produced Web Series about Gay Youth

  19 April 2011

Nineteen year old Jhoncito Arango's most recent web project has certainly caught the local media's eye in his native Colombia, where his web series Yonkis has had a very good reception considering that it tackles a topic that is still considered highly sensitive in this Catholic country: homosexuality.

Nigeria: Hackers Wish

  18 April 2011

Nigeria hackers wish: How I wish there is a place in Lagos, Nigeria where: 1. I can code without bothering about power cuts from the power company, my inverter running down, my generator running out of fuel or my laptop dying and also have REAL BROADBAND ACCESS. 2. I can...

Russia: Bloggers Stop FSB Initiative To Ban Skype

RuNet Echo  18 April 2011

It was just a stroke of luck that on Friday, April 8, 2011, LiveJournal did actually work; before and after this date it would constantly “crash” or “die” due to hacker attacks for periods ranging from several hours to half a day. But on this particular Friday it worked, and it’s possible that this saved the Russian Internet and all its users from yet another prohibitive initiative from the FSB (Federal Security Service). At least for the time being.

Brunei: Twestival Unites Local Netizens

  18 April 2011

Brunei's first Twestival event gathered the country's leading bloggers and other netizens in support of the Child Development Centre, a group that provides assistance to children with special needs.

Hungary: A Medical Doctor on Twitter

  18 April 2011

Debrecen-based Bertalan Meskó, a medical doctor who tweets under the name @Berci and has more than 6,000 followers, reported on his blog [en] that he was listed among the Top 10 Medical Tweeters on Project IVLine. He wrote this about his Twitter experience: “Whenever I have a question about my...

Armenia: Internet Penetration

  17 April 2011

Despite government claims of 47.1 percent, Social Science in the Caucasus analyzes its 2010 household survey to assess the real level of Internet penetration in Armenia and especially as it relates to mobile access.

Vietnam: Facebook partners with local telecom giant

  17 April 2011

James Bao cites a report from PC World Vietnam about the partnership of Facebook and FPT, a telecom giant in Vietnam. Facebook is regularly blocked in Vietnam and FPT is often blamed for making the popular social network site inaccessible in the country.

Ghana: Bloggers React to Demeaning and Misleading Article

  15 April 2011

On April 8, 2011, Ghanaians came across a very demeaning and disgraceful article titled “Inside the criminal world of Ghana's e-mail scam gangs” by Thomas Morton, which got featured on the CNN website. Ghanaian bloggers consider the journalist to be completely uninformed and biased.