I was listening to a recent conversation between Siva Vaidhyanathan, the author of “Googalization of Everything” and Matt Brittin, the newly appointed CEO of Google UK.

While I found the overall conversation interesting, one particular phrase caught my attention.  When he was defending Google against allegation of being parasitic (i.e. they do not produce content, but only provide access to it), Matt Brittin said that it is an: “easy criticism to level, particularly in a really tough downturn, which is affecting media companies all over the world including Google” (emphasis added).

Of course this is not a trend (yet?), but I find it really interesting that Google high-level executive  talks about the company in terms of media.  I think it further contributes to our growing realization that information and communication technologies (ICTs) as social factors are becomming more and more amalgamted with content.  This is a really interesting contribution to the argument that it is important to consider content related aspects when we talk about technology or in other words that we are talking about media, information, and communication technology (MICT) and not just ICT.

Just a note I wonted to take and to share.

In the video below a really nice, but nameless, girl is advertising the current ITU video contest titled “The future of ICTs” using some really “fancy” video effects.

Leaving aside the particularities of the video, the competition itself looks like a good opportunity for those of you who are interested in getting their ideas heard and perhaps even make it to the upcoming World Telecommunication Policy Forum in Lisbon in April.

In a nutshell, you have to have something visionary to say about the future of media, information, and communication technology, you have to be between the ages of 18 and 26, you should speak in English, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, French or Russian, and you need to know how to shoot and upload videos to YouTube.

The deadline for your submissions is March 31.

Currently there is only one video response published on YouTube, so I guess there is still room to compete.  Here is the link again (you should read the conditions carefuly) and good luck!

Although it received quite a lot of (somewhat just) criticism on OLPC news (here and here with the second post trying to make sense of the first one), I think this is quite an interesting move on behalf of OLPC.  I think there is a lot of the youth potential, which the author of the blog post is overlooking and I would like to share this opportunity with those of you who are interested in OLPC-related activities.  For example, I think it may particularly interest those of you who were at the last ITU YF in Bangkok and had an opportunity to be thoroughly introduced to the XO laptops.

Here is the gist of the initiative:

What?

OLPCorps Africa is a unique grant program focused specifically on learning in Africa. Student teams are equipped with the tools, resources, and know-how to develop grassroots learning environments in an African country of their choice. OLPC is drawing upon the world’s student leaders to spark a university-led grassroots initiative in this global learning movement. Through OLPCorps Africa, OLPC is creating a global network of student leaders who will create a lasting impact at the local level, build a network of student activists, and initiate a grant program that will become renown.  (source)

Eligibility? - Undergraduate and graduate students, over 18 years old, from any country.

How?

$3,500,000 for 100 teams of college students to get $35,000 in support for 10 week projects in Africa. Each group gets 100 XO laptops, assorted hardware, a $10,000 stipend, and 10-day training in Kigali, Rwanda, before being sent out to projects. (source)

When?

The workshop will begin June 8th and end June 17th. Teams should arrive at least 1 day before. However, teams are encouraged to arrive as early as the 6th in order to adjust to the time-difference and leave room for flight-delays or any other unexpected circumstances which may arise. (source)

The duration of the Grant Program is 10 weeks (June - August), including the orientation in Kigali. Teams should arrange with their local partner to stay for at least 9 weeks. (source)

Proposals deadline is March 27th.

Please consult the wiki of the project for further details.  Note that there are many people there who are looking for local partners to form a proposal team.  So, if you are in Africa, you may find good partners there.

I was also excited to see that there is a group of Cornell students who have applied for this opportunity.  I hope to get in touch with them and offer them my help.  If any of you is applying, I would be also glad to hear about that!  Please let me know if I can help, particularly with linking people who are looking for partners.

Good luck everyone!

Although it received quite a lot of (somewhat just) criticism on OLPC news (here and here with the second post trying to make sense of the first one), I think this is quite an interesting move on behalf of OLPC.  I think there is a lot of the youth potential, which the author of the blog post is overlooking and I would like to share this opportunity with those of you who are interested in OLPC-related activities.  For example, I think it may particularly interest those of you who were at the last ITU YF in Bangkok and had an opportunity to be thoroughly introduced to the XO laptops.

Here is the gist of the initiative:

What?

OLPCorps Africa is a unique grant program focused specifically on learning in Africa. Student teams are equipped with the tools, resources, and know-how to develop grassroots learning environments in an African country of their choice. OLPC is drawing upon the world’s student leaders to spark a university-led grassroots initiative in this global learning movement. Through OLPCorps Africa, OLPC is creating a global network of student leaders who will create a lasting impact at the local level, build a network of student activists, and initiate a grant program that will become renown.  (source)

Eligibility? - Undergraduate and graduate students, over 18 years old, from any country.

How?

$3,500,000 for 100 teams of college students to get $35,000 in support for 10 week projects in Africa. Each group gets 100 XO laptops, assorted hardware, a $10,000 stipend, and 10-day training in Kigali, Rwanda, before being sent out to projects. (source)

When?

The workshop will begin June 8th and end June 17th. Teams should arrive at least 1 day before. However, teams are encouraged to arrive as early as the 6th in order to adjust to the time-difference and leave room for flight-delays or any other unexpected circumstances which may arise. (source)

The duration of the Grant Program is 10 weeks (June - August), including the orientation in Kigali. Teams should arrange with their local partner to stay for at least 9 weeks. (source)

Proposals deadline is March 27th.

Please consult the wiki of the project for further details.  Note that there are many people there who are looking for local partners to form a proposal team.  So, if you are in Africa, you may find good partners there.

I was also excited to see that there is a group of Cornell students who have applied for this opportunity.  I hope to get in touch with them and offer them my help.  If any of you is applying, I would be also glad to hear about that!  Please let me know if I can help, particularly with linking people who are looking for partners.

Good luck everyone!

I started collecting this digest about two weeks ago, but between the A-exams and other commitments, I did not have the time to update or publish it. So, here it is. Perhaps slightly outdated, but hopefully still interesting:

Recent news related

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

Digital Divide

MICT regulation

MICT business

“New” media

MICT and politics

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

Recent news related

Gfail.  My past nightmare was recently shared by many others who could not access their Gmail accounts and faced a rather annoying 502 error.  TechBlorge wrote - “The Gmail is failing, the Gmail is failing!” - Bits told about - “Four Hours Without Gmail” - and VentureBeat asked - “Where were you during the great Gmail outage of February 2009?” (more here).  Now I am even more eager to figure out if it is possible to back it up with the offline version.  In the meantime, Google has offered a compensation to its corporate (read “paying”) costumers - “Paying GFail victims get 15 days of free service“.  Google also published their official explanation to the blackout.

And as long as we are on Google, here is another piece of news - “Google Switches Approach to Philanthropy” - now it is going to be more focused and more technology oriented.

[Image by anonymonk]

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“The Atlantic Century: Benchmarking EU and U.S. Innovation and Competitiveness” (via Thoughts about k4d) (PDF of the full report) - The Information technology and Innovation Foundation has released a report comparing the climate of innovation in 40 countries.  In fact, for me, the findings were not as interesting as the methodological part, because it is not an easy task to measure innovation.  Here is a NY Times article about this report.

“Job Seekers Turn to the Web” - As the unemployment skyrockets, Hitwise show that more and more people turn online to look for jobs.

“Telegraph.co.uk top of Digg league” - A post with a graph showing the frequency of digged stories from different outlets; my sense though is that it accounts for only British newspapers.  Kind of expected, but still interesting to see some numbers attached to it.  Also, they highlight the growth of traffic to LinkedIn, which may suggest some new, social-networking-heavy, trends in job searching.

“Is a Plane More Fuel Efficient Than a Prius?” (via FlowingData) - Apparently the answer is “yes”.

“Ephemeris” (via FlowingData) - You have probably heard about a recent collision of two communication satellites, this is a neat visualization of the various garbage floating around the earth.

Some country stats:

• Bosnia - mobile subscribers base
• Greece - broadband penetration
• India - web traffic
• Russia - information technologies and services export
• World - internet domain names

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

“The Future of Internet Regulation” (via Information Policy) - Phil Weiser from the law school at the University of Colorado published a working paper where he outlines a model for internet regulation, focusing primarily on the US case.

“The ‘Black Box’ of Peer Review” - If  you are in the academia, you may be interested in reading this review of Michèle Lamont’s book “How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment” or maybe even the book itself.

Digital Divide

“Surprise: America is No. 1 in Broadband” (via LIRNEasia, full report PDF) - Even though LIRNEasia kind of dismisses the idea that adoption of technology can (or perhaps even should) be measured not only by the number of links or the speed of connection, I find the approach described in this report an interesting step in potentially right direction (need to read it in more detail to form a clearer opinion).  On the other hand, here is a critique of the report and in fact of any kind of measurements.  I am not sure what exactly was the aim of the critique apart from suggesting that if everybody is connected and uterly technolgically literate it will be very good.  But the author does not suggest any ways of assessing the process of getting there, which I think this whole measurement debate is about.

“Industry pitch that Smartphones belong in classroom” - The more smartphones become like computers, the more sense it makes to integrate them in the classroom; but I wonder if there is a $100 (or less) smartphone coming any time soon and what its operational costs would be…

“German Government Introduces National Broadband Strategy, Pledges to Auction Digital Dividend” - I’ve mentioned it in a previous digest and here is more info.  I just wonder what does “growth friendly regulatory environment” mean… ideas?

“Vint Cerf: We Still Have 80 Per Cent of the World to Connect” (via Information Policy) - The “father of the internet” is referring to some technical aspects of “bridging the digital divide”.

MICT regulation

As I have mentioned in one of my previous digests, the Internet Governance Project is publishing - “A Field Guide to the ICANN Reforms“.  So far they have published two parts.  First part (which is actually second :) - “September 2006 Diagnosis: The GNSO Needs Fixing “. And the second part (which is actually third) - “The Board’s Plan to Reform the GNSO“.

“We Should Only Subsidize Wireless And Next-Gen Wireline Broadband” - In general, I think this makes sense, as investing in technology that is going to be outdated by the time the infrastructure is in place may prove to be counterproductive.

“Turning Universal Service Funds into Agents of Change” - Andres Maz on Cisco’s blog is calling for reviewing the “good old” universal service policy.

“Obama’s deficit plan hikes tax on carried interest for VCs, hedge funds” - I believe this is one of the first criticisms of the recovery plan and the way it was passed.

MICT business

“How Does WordPress Make Money?” - I find this rather inspiring how a company like Automattic (WordPress) are making money by being good and not just by exploiting human weaknesses or simply by taking chances.

“Lehman Brothers Spins Off Venture Capital Arm” - Just a note to self about some post-bankruptcy changes.

“New” media

“Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki” - In case you wondered which of the Fortune 500 companies have blogs, this is an attempt to pull them all together.  I am not sure I completely understand what is that site that hosts this list and who stands behind it, but it has some cool stuff like - “Big Questions Wiki” - which attempts to answer questions such as “Why do we sleep?”.  Does anyone have a clue who stands behind this project and what is its purpose?

“Facebook and Bebo risk ‘infantilising’ the human mind” - Susan Grrenfield gave a rather scary talk to the British government, which reminded me the early reactions to television (more here and here).  Even though she is a scholar researching the brain, I didn’t see her pointing at any research to have a meaningful debate.  What do you think?

“Primates on Facebook” (via Inside Facebook via ICT4Peace) - On a related note, this is a glimpse at the social dynamics on FB; I wish there was more data available.

“*Social* media literacy: The new Internet safety” (via Eszter’s Blog) - Some interesting thoughts about “soft”approaches to online safety (contrary to “hard” approaches such as filtering).

“Netflix streams already rushing past DVDs in 2009?” - In the midst of HD-DVD vs. Blue Ray war I remember reading an argument that it may not be at all relevant because we will be able to stream high definition video pretty soon.  I wonder if that day is coming closer.  Here are some more thoughts on the subject.

MICT and politics

“A new era of fiscal responsibility… and blogging” - The Obama administration is blogging about budget and I wonder if we start seeing some gaps emerging between the ways things are presented at the White House blog and the media.  What do you think?

“All eyes on Obama” - On a related note, Alexa blog is showing a retrospective on Obama’s web-presence, comparing the popularity of his campaign site, change.gov, the website of the White House, and the recent recovery.gov.

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“Tasks Written in Easy to Read Fonts Are More Likely to be Completed” - Now, if that actually holds water, it make sense to switch to Arial permanently; it may particularly interest those of us who need to hand out exams and assignments.

“Musicthatmakesyoudumb” (via Digital Inspiration) - An exercise by Caltech PhD student, Virgil Griffith, where he correlates music tastes of students with SAT scores of the schools they go to.  Apparently, he also did a similar exercise with books and posted some interesting insights on his website.

“Working landscapes” - A post about photography that is trying to capture industralization - beautiful in its special way.

“Skype 4.0 VoIP Service” - I am using this version for probably a week or two now and am starting getting used to the new interface.  I am not sure why they needed such a drastic interface change though.  Maybe it is trying to compete with the sliker designs of their competitors such as - “ooVoo VoIP Service“.