Rhetoric has been always a very powerful tool in promoting both policy and business agendas.  Russian telcos are now putting the old-good argument of security in promoting legislation that may allow them to succeed where their European and other colleagues have failed.

It seems that all around the world the telcos feel threatened by Voice over IP (VoIP) applications that run on their infrastructure and offer free of charge voice services, with Skype being an iconic example*.  Only recently, the European telecos tried to argue for unfair competition and asked to discriminate against the use of VoIP on their networks.  The European Commission took a firm stand against it arguing for principles of net-neutrality also on mobile networks.  In the US AT&T, together with Apple, work against VoIP applications such as Skype and Google Voice to be used on the iPhones.  It will be now up to the FCC to take a stand on that issue.  Finally, the Israeli leading mobile service provider, Cellecom, is also seeking ways of limiting its users’ access to VoIP and some other technologies, under the slogan of “quality of service.”  The Israeli Ministry of Communication actually took a pro net neutrality stand in this case, but the argument is still going on.

In Russia, however, the local industry decided to make the long story short and instead of appealing to amorphous concepts such as “fairness” in competition or “quality of service” it turned to a more basic instinct – fear.  According to this article, Russian telcos have warned the Kremlin that:

“…the foreign-made VoIP software, easily downloaded from the Internet, is a threat to national security because it is resistant to eavesdropping by Russia’s intelligence agencies.”

To make things a bit spicier, they also added some nationalism.  The lobbying group was quoted saying that:

“The majority of brands operating in Russia, such as Skype and Icq, are of foreign origin and therefore we need to ensure the defense of national producers in this sector”

While some civil rights activists are concerned with the state openly talking about spying on people, others view it a bit more pragmatically.  In a recent hearing on the subject it was estimated that in about 3 years 40% of voice traffic in Russia will be VoIP.  This creates a significant incentive for the industry to cooperate on legislation that “will bring order” to the VoIP market.  Indeed such an effort is currently underway in Russia.

There was limited, but critical reaction on this topic in the mainstream Russian media and  even the blogsphere reacted only on the margines; some expressed concerns, others healthy sarcasm.  I wonder though, if conversations about VoIP are going on in other countries as well, and if so, what arguments are made against and for it.

* Disclamer – I use Skype and, to the most part, like it.

At the last WTPF meeting I learned about the Magellan laptop project of the Portuguese government.  Every participant was provided with such a laptop for the duration of the forum, at the end of which the laptops were supposed to be donated “to children in a developing country.”  I am not sure where exactly they went, but many of the participants got to keep their laptops and were provided with a lot of information about the project.

The Magellan initiative, named after the 16th century explorer, is a collaboration between Intel and the Portuguese government.  According to Mr. Mario Lino, Minister of Public Works, Transport and Communications, it is part of the government’s commitment to development of the “information society” in Portugal.  The aim is to deliver those laptops to 1.1 million students registered in their e-school program and supposedly 800K have been already deployed.  Moreover, the initiative is looking to expand beyond the Portuguese borders.  A number of times during the forums it was mentioned that a really large shipment of Magellan laptops (if I remember correctly about 200K) went to Columbia and shipments to other corners of the world are on their way.

The project representatives I talked to at the forum were not ready to say how much it would cost if someone wanted to by a batch of these machines.  They sold them on spot for 250 Euro a piece, but told me that the price will be negotiated per project depending on the quantities and the educational needs of the client.  From my neighbor on the flights back to the US, whose kid participates in the program, I learned that in Portugal those laptops are distributed for 50 Euro maximum (if the family is not eligible for any additional subsidies).  If the family falls in certain category, it would get not only the laptop for free, but also an internet connection as long as there are children aged 8-10 in the household and their participate in the program.

Indeed, the program is very well known in Portugal.  I was lucky enough to receive one of those laptops and carrying it around and taking it on the plane attracted both attention and comments of the locals who were really proud about their local laptop traveling to the US.

Digging into it, Magellan laptop is the Classmate PC in a different cover.  I think Intel have handled it really smart with this project.  They gave the Portuguese government the ability to repackage their Classmate PC so that it could be presented to the world as a Portuguese laptop and the Portuguese government could take the credit.  In other words, the Portuguese government rips political dividend while helping Intel disseminating their technology.  Sort of a win-win situation.

The laptops are indeed assembled in Portugal (from parts made in China), which makes it the first European laptop.  My version came with Windows XP in English, but from my neighbor on the flights back I learned that machines distributed in Portugal come with dual boot of XP and Ubuntu.  Moreover, they come with an educational software, which according to my neighbor was rather buggy and not very useful.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the software.

The size, the design, and most importantly the purpose of the laptop (and the entire program), raised an immediate comparison to OLPC and XO, but on that (and more on the specs of the laptop) in a latter post.  In the meantime, here are few more pictures of the machine with some comments.

Just to give you a sense of its size compared to a standard business card; also note the handle to carry it around

An open laptop: the keybord is pretty small (designed for kids) and my version has Portuguese layout; the touch pad is nice, but I couldn't figure out how to turn off the tapping functionality; note a built-in webcam above the screen

Right side: USB port, SD card reader, LAN, and power

Left side: Another USB port, headphones and microphone jacks

The bottom view of the laptop

Another bottom view, this time with the battery out

As part of global catching up, I put together another digest.  While rather long, it still misses many interesting things from the past month or so. Hope you will find something interesting in all those links.

Recent news related

I missed the boat to share some interesting stories about the use of technology in the developments that followed the Iranian election, but there is something else rather interesting and recent that I found intriguing.  I have posted some thoughts about Amazon Kindle before and even though I started questioning my position a little bit, they just supplied me with additional food for thought.

“Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others” (via Joho) - A NYT article about Amazon removing some books from people’s Kindles because the publishers have changed their minds about distributing digital copies.  While the story in itself is not at all funny, there is an aspect of irony to it - the withdraw books were George Orwell’s “1984″ and “Animal Farm.”

“Amazon Removes Books from Kindle, Exposing the True Concern: They’re Watching, They’re in Control“- Michael Zimmer is sharing some thoughts about the accident and is drawing broader concerns about the TOS of the service.

“Orwellian indeed” - Here are Jonathan Zittrain’s thoughts about the accident where he highlights the fact that content is leased in the cloud rather than purchased, which in turn raises an additional set of concerns.

To me this story links well to a broader conversation about consumer electronic producers building proprietary, locket devices, which make their users sort of hostages.  Apologies to my Mac-loving friends, but Apple is one of the main players in this playground - “Apple hands Palm a problem and gets slapped by Microsoft” - the Palm part of the story is relevant to my argument here.

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“Home Broadband Adoption 2009” - Pew report that shows that more Americans use broadband even though it got more expansive compared to just a year ago.

“Report: kids’ use of tech growing exponentially” - I clearly remember that I saw a link to this article on somebody’s FB, but I cannot remember on whose (so, sorry for not providing proper credit).  This is an Arstechnica article summarizing a report from NPD Group with some numbers about communication technology adoption among the US teens.  I think there are two particularly interesting observations.  First, kids are the trend setters in the families when it comes to communication technology.  Second, the girls adopt laptops and mobile phones on a higher rate than the boys, which I think is not trivial finding (for example see danah boyd’s notes on perceptions of computing).

“Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2007” (via Thoughts about K4D) - A brief introduction of the Polity IV project at the Center for Systemic Peace and George Mason University with link to the raw data.  Looks pretty interesting.

“Factbook eXplorer” (via FlowingData) - OECD launched an interesting tool that allows one to play with their statistical data about the member states.

“2008 Briefing Booklet” - of the World Information Access Project.  Unfortunately, the report has only a few soundbites, but it would be so great if the authors would make the actual data available for exploration and perhaps even replication of their studies (they did it with other studies in the past).

“A 10 percentage-point increase in broadband results in a 1.3 % increase in economic growth” - Cisco’s summary of a recent World Bank report on information and communication for development; unfortunately, the report itself is available only partially online.

Some country data:

• Brazil - Mobile penetration
• Cuba - Teledensity
• Czech Republic - Mobile advertising
• Europe - Broadband
• Global - Telcos competition
• Global - Wireless
• Hungary - Mobile penetration (decline)
• India - Telecom market
• Indonesia - Telecom market
• Latin America - Telecom markets
• Lithuania - Telecom market
• Pakistan - Mobile penetration
• South Africa - SIM card usage
• Turkey - Telecom market
• USA - Broadband

And finally, in the spirit of the recent Twitter-mania, here are “100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Twitter Research” to fool around with.

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

“The end of journalism” and “The Challenges of Online News Micropayments and Subscriptions” - Robert Picard discusses journalism and newspaper business models.

“Students Without Borders” - WP article about various initiatives where school student in the US connect online with their peers abroad in an organized fashion.

“Google and the Evolution of Search” (via The Googlization of Everything) - A series of three articles about Google and how it works.  I learned a number of new things there.

Digital Divide

“One Laptop Per Child: Vision vs. Reality” - An ACM article reviewing the OLPC project.  Unfortunately, you will need to have a subscription to read it, but I think most universities should have one.

“Popularity of Facebook and MySpace changes, but SES differences in use persist” - Eszter Hargittai is sharing some preliminary findings from her study of college students’ use of the Internet; in this update: Facebook is gaining popularity, while MySpace is loosing it, but ethnic and racial differences in usage persist as well as differences based on parents’ education.

“Guide to Measuring the Information Society” - The OECD has published a document with definitions of various aspects of what is considered the ‘information society’ - good food for thought.  And on a related note - “The real story behind broadband household penetration rates.”

More on the matter of definitions.  As the broadband stimulus in the US is moving forward, a debate is starting to take place about the definition of broadband in the plan.  Here are two critical opinions: “Why The BTOP/BIP NOFA Definition of Broadband Is Inadequate” and “Back to the future for broadband in America” - both seems to be stunned by the lack of aspiration of the technical requirements.

“Broadband Over Power Lines” - A very detailed report (PDF) from the OECD covering both the technology and the regulatory issues (have not read it all, but it looks promising).

“Digital Britain final report” (via ICT Statistics) - More detail on the UK ambitious plan of having universal access to broadband by 2012.

MICT regulation

“When You Hear ‘Security,’ Think ‘National Sovereignty’” - Hans Klein is taking a critical look at the recent Internet policy rhetoric of Obama administration; I think this post helps us think about the importance of studying the discourse of the policy making, particularly in such a dynamic area as Internet Governance (and in light of the background of the incoming ICANN CEO).

“What are TLDs Good For?” - John Levine is raising some questions about the need for new top level domains (like .com, .org, and .info).  I have to say that I share some of his questions, particularly about whether “anyone will use a TLD rather than a search engine as a directory” and there seems to be a general agreement in the comments.

“Sharing ICANN Can Be Win-Win for the United States” and “Careful What You Wish For: Why ICANN “Independence” is a Bad Idea” - As the expiration date of the MOU between ICANN and the DOC approaches, I think we will see more and more analysis of pros and cons of changing the control structure of ICANN.

MICT business

“The poor connection between internet advertising and newspaper woes” - Robert Picard shared some data about newspaper revenue from classifieds and online advertising, which started an interesting discussion in the comments.  What do you think on the subject?

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“5 Great Microsoft Web Services You Probably Don’t Use” - Is Microsoft loosing its status as the ultimate evil?  But seriously, some of these services are useful.

“A plant that ‘twits’” - Veronica and I got a little bit into Arduino recently and this is a really nice example of how it can be used creatively.  And here is another use for it - “Precocious Baby Starts Twittering from the Womb.”

“If Aliens Were Tuning Into Our Television Frequencies…” - A fun and graphical trip back in time.

“Collect Data About Yourself with Twitter” - A friendly invitation to self-survelance using Twitter (I am trying to think what practical uses it may have).

“Life and Internet” - The post itself is in Hebrew, but the point of the post is a little collection of Internet-related caricatures - enjoy!  :)

And finally, here is the future as it is envisioned by Microsoft (everything is connected to everything and no privacy whatsoever) (via netcraft Bytes):

I think if you are reading this blog, you must be familiar with Creative Commons (CC).  But have you ever wondered how widely spread this license actually is?  Well, there are people who are thinking about it and even started looking into the issue.  Giorgos Cheliotis is one of them.  He is currently a visiting scholar at Berkman and earlier this week he gave a talk about the CC Monitor project.

The project has been out there for three years, but the website is rather new and is still considered under development as the team is figuring out the best way to capture and analyze the use of CC licenses around the world.  They have built an online (wiki-based) platform/repository which presents the raw data and some visualizations for others to use and think about. This is what global distribution of CC licenses looks like.

There are overall estimated 170,268,161 CC licenses in the world, but the map refers to a subset of them.  It includes only the ported (i.e. jurisdiction specific) licenses - those that could be linked to a specific geographic location.  Apparently, there are about 50 countries in the world that have strong CC communities who worked on translating and adopting the general licenses to the local jurisdiction.

The darker areas of the map correspond to the higher number of CC licenses in the country.  Here is for example what Europe looks like once we zoom in:

If you go to the website, you can see the actual number once you hover over the map with your mouse.  The way they collect these data is through counting back-links (or in-links) to specific CC deed pages (like this one).  Of course it is not perfect, but it is more than what we had before and it is there for everyone to use.  The idea behind the site is to build a “live data wiki”, which brings its own challenges such as the data being updated constantly, but not the analysis and the explanations.

On the wiki you can find data about the individual countries and also what they call “freedom scores”.  These scores refers to the degree of openness of the licenses used in each place.  As you may know, there are different types of licenses one can give to his or her work.  This blog, for example, is licensed under by-nc-sa license, which would not score very high on the freedom scale (and I also need to fix things, so it would actually show here).  Overall, this is what the world looks like in terms of openness of the CC licenses:

As before, the darker areas represent higher scores.  You may want to take a look at this table comparing the scores of different countries side by side.

If you have the time, I suggest you watch the talk (I wish it was possible to embed videos from Berkman website :).  Giorgos goes further into a case study, asking whether people utilize the CC licenses and actually work with the open content.  I know that I learned a lot about CC that I did not know about before.

Thanks to Veronica’s attention to everything, I just found out that Thomson Reuters lawsuit against Zotero was dismissed by a Virginia Circuit Court judge in early June.  Here are some snippets of the news from SlashDot, Chronicle of Higher Education and more.  I wish I could read the actual order for details and explanations, but so far I don’t think it is available.