· August, 2007

Stories about Technology from August, 2007

Bermuda: The Politics of Facebook

  21 August 2007

Thanks to Facebook, Paradise Found is “friends with the two most politically influential people in Bemuda” and shares his thoughts on this new political tool.

Barbados: What Blogging is About

  21 August 2007

“Blogs tend to respond quite fast to events as they develop…they seem to…fill a number of gaps in supplying information. I was fascinated to see what has happened to this site over the past week, as the hurricane season got a full head of steam.” Dennis Jones at Living in...

Caribbean: Indigenous Percentage

  20 August 2007

“I would hate to be a 12 percent American Indian in a debate about indigenous issues with a 13 percent American Indian,” writes Maximilian C. Forte of The CAC Review, as he tackles the issue of DNA testing to determine indigenous cultural identity.

Ecuador: Reporting Internet Campaign Expenses

  18 August 2007

Christian Espinoza of Cobertura Digital [ES] links to an article that discusses the fact that internet advertisement for the upcoming Constituent elections is not regulated, but should be reported as a campaign expense.

China: Blogs deleted, barred and officially backed

  18 August 2007

An eventful week on the backside of the Chinese blogsphere with an entire blogging website desisted, one high-profile blog deleted and another put on the unmentionable list; two web 2.0 companies battle it out in the courts and one novice blogger tries to gain readers the nouveau-riche way.

Vietnam: Web Censorship

  18 August 2007

When I began considering posting on Global Voices from Vietnam, the first thought that came to mind was what exactly was I allowed to post? What topics could I cover, and which ones should I avoid? The media in communist Vietnam is state controlled, and although the internet isn’t as...

Africa: Web 2.0 and African civil society

  18 August 2007

Gathering stories about web 2.0 in African civil society: “As part of this, I wanted to get an update from Kabissa members and others in African civil society about their use of blogging and other social networking tools – remarkably, there are not that many case studies available despite the...

Japan: The Hunt for Otaku

  18 August 2007

Matt Alt at Alt Japan reports on the latest case of “otaku gari”, the practice of hunting down otaku (nerds) and robbing them of their money and fancy toys. In this case, the hunters were a brother and sister, who after being caught explained that “otaku are weak and they’ve...

Russia: Racism

  17 August 2007

Mark MacKinnon writes about violence against non-Russians in Russia and the Kremlin's “strategy” of making Putin look like “a least-bad option” by not discouraging more radical political views: “…the monsters it created are now out of even the Kremlin's control.”

Bahrain: Poetry Slammed!

This week Bahraini bloggers express their concerns about the country's electronic identity cards. With the school year about to begin, education is a hot topic. Be careful what you write when you send a job application – you might unwittingly become one of the new superheroes, The Employables! We finish with some strong opinions regarding the literary scene in Bahrain.

Hong Kong: Yahoo Hong Kong, Please Explain!

  17 August 2007

Flickr lover from inmediahk.net picked up the story on Yahoo Hong Kong's direct involvement in Shi Tao's case and commented that the company had violated the “One country Two system” principle as Hong Kong registered company should follow local law and protect its users accordingly (zh). He demanded the company...

Nigeria: Blogger's opinion about the Superblog

  16 August 2007

The debate about the new Nigerian blog aggregator, the SuperBlog, continues: “The purpose of Naija Alive is to create a unified voice for Nigeria, a unified voice that contains many voices. Such deserves praise and support. But, I never said that my blog was a Nigerian blog. Sometimes I write...

Zimbabwe: Mugabe blacklists Global Voices Online

  16 August 2007

The government of Zimbabwe blacklists Global Voices Online: “Evidently, Global Voices is one of the sources of “‘virulent propaganda’ to delegitimise ‘our just struggle against Anglo-Saxons’.” We’re one of 41 websites blacklisted by the ZANU-PF government, a list that includes the Washington Post and CNN, as well as the personal...

Hossein Derakhshan’s blog is suspended

The blog of the Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan (aka Hoder) has been suspended by the U.S. based hosting company, Hosting Matters, after a complaint filed by lawyers representing Mehdi Khalaji, Next Generation fellow at The Washington Institute. The complaint -not filed to the court- centered on allegedly defamatory content published...