6 August 2008

Stories from 6 August 2008

iSummit2008: The Japanese-English divide

  6 August 2008

The 2008 iSummit in Sapporo, Japan ended last week after three days of keynotes and lab sessions on open content and open culture. Blogger Shinya Ichinohe (shinyai), who attended the event, reflected on his experiences, noting that while grateful for all that he learned, he also regrets the division which emerged between Japanese-language and English-language tracks.

Turkey: Dailymotion blocked

Access to the french video-sharing website Dailymotion.com has been blocked in Turkey since August 2nd 2008. According to Erkan Saka, an Istanbul-based blogger, “the decision to ban the site came without any explanation.”

Lebanon: Power outages

“…getting stuck in the ascenseur [elevator] is a rite of passage here. You cannot delay the inevitable indefinitely. Its risk factor has to be taken into consideration every time you are getting off the ground aiming for higher floors. Grocery shopping, garbage collection, wakes, tea time, and other social gatherings...

Uruguay: Listing of Podcasts

  6 August 2008

Tan Conectados [es] has begun to collect and list the various different podcasts made in Uruguay. The site hopes to motivate more people to create these podcasts.

Armenia: Turkish Football Fans

  6 August 2008

Ahead of September's historic football match between estranged neighbors Armenia and Turkey, Unzipped comments on rumors circulating in Yerevan that as many as 10,000 Turkish football fans might descend on the capital. The blog notes that “football diplomacy” might yet represent a real possibility for a breakthrough in relations between...

Armenia: Corruption

  6 August 2008

The Armenian Observer commends the new prime minister, former Central Bank Chairperson Tigran Sargsyan, for what appears to be genuine efforts to combat some of the corruption that has infested government structures and skyrocketed since the early 1990s. Even so, the blog notes that the radical opposition led by Armenia's...

Azerbaijan: Corruption

  6 August 2008

Thoughts on the Road says that it raised the issue of corruption with a group of Azerbaijani students who determined that both the government and citizens were responsible for fighting against the phenomenon. However, the blog notes, such a reality is first of all dependent on their being the political...

Sri Lanka: Monitoring Mobiles

  6 August 2008

A mobile telephony provider in Sri Lanka wants all users to include photographs in their registration documents. LirneASIA doesn't see the point of such a move.

Nigeria: ChallengeIT Camp 2008

  6 August 2008

Oro blogs about ChallengeIT Camp 2008 in Nigeria. ChallengeIT is an information technology camp for senior secondary school students and post secondary students who are not above eighteen years old.

Morocco: Burgeoning Mollywood

Morocco has long been a mecca for foreign filmmakers. Iconic films like The Last Temptation of Christ and Lawrence of Arabia, as well as more recent films Rendition and Black Hawk Down, use Morocco as their backdrop. Other films like Babel utilize more than Morocco's landscape, taking its culture and people into account as well. Morocco's film industry hasn't escaped the blogosphere, reports Jillian York, on Mollywood.

Croatia: The Death of Dinko Šakić

  6 August 2008

A few days ago Dinko Šakić, the commander of the infamous WWII Jasenovac Concentration Camp (Croatia) died, having served only half of the sentence in jail for his role in the extermination of inmates. He was buried in his war-time Ustaša (Nazi Croatian movement) uniform, causing a stir in Croatia.