Google’s carbon footprint is on a par with that of the UN, claims the Internet giant’s first disclosure of its energy usage. Google emits 1.5 million tonnes of carbon annually but claims its data centres consume 50 per cent less energy than the industry average. Google said many of its …
Twenty years ago, when Tim Berners-Lee linked up a community of scientists in what came to be known as the worldwide web, Jaron Lanier was an enthusiast of the project. Like many others he believed in the democratic potential of a large online community. Lanier’s views began to change around …
Google’s Street View is heading down the Amazon to capture pictures of “some of the most remote and biodiverse areas in the world”, says its official blog. The Street View team will be floating downriver in Peru in partnership with the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS), the non-profit conservation organisation that …
WANT to know which migratory birds do your region host? Or perhaps, you want to check on the conservation status of a bird species. The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) has a website on avian ecology giving exactly this kind of information. The site, set up in collaboration with the …
A hacker group has attacked Blackberry’s website after the company said it would assist the police investigating riots in the UK. On August 10, Team Poison defaced the official Blackberry blog, posting a message that threatened the firm with retaliation if it handed users’ data to the authorities. UK police …
Many believe Canada’s tar sands industry to be the world’s most environmentally destructive energy industry. But not Aleykhan Velshi, a 27-year-old neocon political communications professional, who launched a website aimed at extolling the virtues of Canada’s “ethical oil”. The term has been coined by conservative political activist Ezra Levant. Click …
If you believe that progress of human civilisation depends on individual expression of new ideas, especially unpopular ideas, then the principle of freedom of speech is the most important value society can uphold. The Internet is usually regarded as the harbinger of free speech. It not only provides universal access …
Government procedures in India are known to confound people. What documents do we submit to apply for a PAN card? How does one get an educational loan? How to apply for a passport? Log on to www.wikifyindia.com and help is at hand. The website, a non-profit initiative, is an aspiring …
Google has stopped collecting images for its Street View service in Bengaluru after police raised security concerns. Google launched its project to collect high definition images to give Google users 360 degree views of streets in Bengaluru in May. “We received a letter from Bengaluru’s commissioner of police and are …
Government officials in a south-west China village wanted to inform residents they were inspecting a new road. Instead, it appears they have become stars of what is being described as a contender for the worst-doctored photograph in Internet history. When a photo of three levitating officials inspecting a newly completed …
Azim Anwar is a smiling young man with a singular mission in life: downloading everything he can possibly find on the Internet related to his interests: movies, funny videos, music, games and football matches. He gets more stuff from his network of friends and relatives (his brother has given him …
It’s a bit of Iraq and Afghanistan out there on the Internet. Just like the invasion of Iraq was lies, deceit and regime change as George W Bush chased illusory weapons of mass destruction in that hapless country, on the Internet, too, there is an element of fabrication and duplicity …
In the spring of 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, cyber activist Eli Pariser asked two friends to google the term “BP”. The results they got were quite different. One saw investment information about BP. The other saw news. For one, …
It is a legal victory with ramifications beyond small English town South Tyneside, where the local government claims Twitter released information about the tweeter who allegedly made libellous statements. The South Tyneside Council petitioned a court in California, US, to identify the user of the site after three councillors and …
American defence strategists have plans to categorise cyber attacks as acts of war, the Pentagon says. “A response to a cyber-incident or attack on the US would not necessarily be a cyber-response. All appropriate options would be on the table,” Pentagon spokesperson Dave Lapan told BBC. A US president could …
The links between digital technologies and politics, especially in the light of the recent West Asian-North African uprisings, have been well-established. But there is a pervasive belief that the technologies of computing, in themselves, are apolitical. There are two warring groups when it comes to debates around political participation and …
Google has agreed to amend its map of the Brazillian city of Rio de Janeiro after the country’s media and city officials slammed it for giving prominence to favelas or shantytowns. When viewed in large format, the map pinpoints several of Rio’s more than 600 favelas. It does not label …
The US government is spending millions of dollars developing technology to help prodemocracy activists in West Asia, Africa and China. Washington has begun to open up about the projects, which include a “panic button” that lets protesters wipe their mobile phones if they are arrested. State department official Michael Posner …
A rianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, cofounders of Huffington Post, sold the popular American website to Internet services and media company, AOL, in March for US $315 million, prompting a group of bloggers to file a $105-million lawsuit against Huffington Post and AOL. The suit is led by Jonathan Tasini, …
THE “about us” section of http://mother-earth-journal. com describes it rather modestly as a citizen journalist project in the US. The content on the site can scarcely be called modest. For one, a rather nononsense home page has articles on mercury toxins, a feature on the Gulf of Mexico, a year …
