With social media stoking revolt against tyranny in Egypt, Tunisia and Iran, it is difficult to be critical of virtual interactions. But there is a group of writers who play devil’s advocate. Last year, journalist Nick Carr warned us of the socially numbing aspects of the Internet, and Evegeny Moro …
On February 4, the non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) doled out its last five batches of IP numbers that identify destinations for digital traffic. Rod Beckstrom, who heads the organisation that designates numbers which give a site its Internet addresses, said, “ICANN cannot give out any …
BESIDES meeting domestic requirements, India exports 1 to 1.1 million tonnes of onion worth Rs 1,000 crore. In the past 25 years onion production has increased from 2.5 to 7.5 million tonnes. These figures are displayed prominently in the website under review. There is no mention of the current crisis, …
After the WikiLeak revelation, cyber activists went to town claiming the disclosures as another indicator of internet-fostered democracy. Within days Western governments and their friends in the cyberworld clamped down on WikiLeaks. The not-so-thinly-veiled attacks on the whistle-blowing site and its charismatic founder, Julian Assange, by Western governments was covertly …
JOURNALISM is a serious business. You need to inform the gullible who is taking advantage of them. But let us admit that while reading the morning paper we, at least sometimes, wish journalists had a funny bone. The website www.gobionastick.com does precisely that and in a straight-faced, journalistic manner. An …
IN recent times, there has been a spurt of online resources that inform people of their carbon footprints. But most of them are programmed for people in the West. Enter www.no2co2.in. The website has dedicated webspace to calculate carbon footprints from Indian cities. The site has also calculated footprints of …
It’s been mayhem and murder on the web with the US government and the McCarthy-like Senator Joe Lieberman, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, getting websites to pull the plug on WikiLeaks. Not all of what they did was sane or even legal. First, Lieberman, or the Obama administration …
A Palestinian blogger, who set off an uproar in the Arab world by claiming he was God and hurling insults at Prophet Muhammad, was caught in a sting that used Facebook to track him down. Over several years, Husayin is suspected of posting arguments in favour of atheism on English …
On November 10 more than 70 websites in the UK defied police rulings to issue guidance to student protesters on avoiding arrest. The protests that began in early November against a hike in university tuition fees have been described by the media as the country’s most intensive student upsurge in …
Google Maps is tangled in a border dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. According to the Costa Rican press, misrepresentation of the country’s northeast around the river San Juan by Google Maps encouraged former Nicaraguan guerrilla leader Eden Pastora to conduct a river dredging operation in the disputed territory. Pastora …
MULOMEDIC, gelicide, blateration. Chances are your word processor would underline them with a red squiggle. They are, however, three of the offerings at Save The Words. The project was launched by Oxford Dictionary to rescue obscure words. The website lets you “adopt” words and keep them alive. The adoption contract …
“DIGESTED sludge from modern plants. If used with circumspection. Gives answers to our prayers and chants. For plant food or perfection.” These are lines from Ode to Sludge. The 925 compositions by American poet F M Veatch are among a host of poetry dedicated to sanitation on the site. Then …
Iranian lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei had to leave the country for protesting child executions. In the Islamic Republic children are publically executed, though they cannot vote till they turn 16. Ten-year- old girls are sentenced to death for having sex. In many of these cases the young girls are silent victims …
Social networking sites were blocked for a week in September by Eric Darr, the provost of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania. It was an experiment to gauge the influence of overpowering social media sites and analyse the effects they have on the psyche of the young. Some …
The website www.badplastics.com busts safety myths propagated in the market by the plastic industry. Many plastic products used in our dayto- day lives contain three extremely toxic chemicals, bisphenol-A (BPA), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and phthalates. These can cause hormonal imbalance, cancer, heart problems, behavioural problems in children and also affect …
CLIMATE change issues often get obfuscated in technical jargon. www.realclimate.org tries to demystify climate change mumbo-jumbo. The site contains work by prominent climate scientists for the public and journalists. It also attempts to provide quick response to developing stories and give the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The site …
THE Asian Development Bank (ADB) that supports infrastructure projects in Asia and the Pacific region is finalising its new public communication policy. It faces a tough challenge: ensuring access to information to communities affected by the projects it funds. To meet this challenge, the bank will have to do away …
Facebook is under pressure to shift to renewable energy. In one of the web’s fastest growing environmental campaigns, Greenpeace International says at least 500,000 people have protested the social networking site’s intention to run its new data centre on coal-generated electric power. The site announced in February this year it …
On August 31, hackers attacked the website of Russia’s Khimki Forest Defenders movement. The activists have been campaigning for more than a year to halt the destruction of a thick forest near Khimki town in Moscow Oblast—a Russian administrative division that includes the country’s capital. The forest is being destroyed …
In recent times, critics have questioned the Internet's utility. The net Luddities range from those who berate it for being an emporium of pornography to those who question the worldwide web's all pervasive influence on modern life. Nicholas Carr is among those who raise significant questions while criticising the Internet. …
