Tag Archives: Politics

Friday Links: Egyptian Internet turned off due to political unrest

• Egypt turned off the Internet to quell protesters. It doesn’t appear to be working (both the quelling of protesters and the Internet). Related: Boing Boing reports on the bill Senator Lieberman introduced to give the US Government the same power Wondering what the heck is going on in Egypt? Mother Jones has a great rundown.
• Also, today is the 25th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.
• This year’s Oscar-nominated movies recreated in LEGOs.
• Things Real People Don’t Say About Advertising.
• 15 geek stained-glass windows, I think one of these would look awesome in the front windows of The Nerdery.
• Pixelmator, a Mac-based image editor, grossed $1 million on the Mac App Store in just 20 days.
• While a bit pricey, these edible Angry Birds cake toppers are pretty cute.
• Can you do nothing for two minutes? It’s a lot longer than you would think.

The Verizon-Google legislative framework proposal

In case you missed it yesterday, Google and Verizon released a Legislative Framework Proposal. This proposal is “to preserve the open Internet and the vibrant and innovative markets it supports, to protect consumers, and to promote continued investment in broadband access. With these goals in mind, together we offer a proposed open Internet framework for the consideration of policymakers and the public.”

So they weren’t brokering a deal as reported last week. Interesting. Pundits all over the Internet are buzzing about this latest move. Here’s a roundup of some of the best responses.

• First, an Op-ed piece in The Washington Post from Google & Verizon’s CEOs.
• Dan Gillmor in Salon on why we should be worried.
• There’s only one Internet.
• Tech companies, Google sold you out.

Friday Links: Super Mario Bros and super-silly politics

• Mario vs. Pac-man.
• Also, Super Mario beatbox.
• Senator Joe Lieberman is backing legistaltion to give the president an Internet kill switch.
• If you haven’t read I’m Comic Sans, you should (unless of course you are offended by swear words in which case do not click that link).
• Nerd gets revenge by buying police department’s expired domain.
• And the murderer wore serifs.
• Web ad spending to surge 10.8%.
• In honor of Toy Story 3′s release today: Toyz Noise.
• Why gadget makers should target late adopters.

Testing Obama’s Nerd Cred

John Hodgman’s address at the Radio & TV Correspondent’s dinner in DC is a pretty good listen filled with nerd references including this one on the topic of nerds versus jocks:

You know where I stand on this great divide, I’m a big fat geek. And there are those of you who’ll say, “Wait a minute didn’t he earlier say he’s a nerd? There’s a difference between geeks and nerds, of course.” To you people I say: shut up nerds. This is not the time for bickering. This is a historic moment because seated to my right, right now is the person some people say is the first nerd president of the modern era.

IMHO, not quite as awesome, but much more friendly than Stephen Colbert’s performance a couple years back.

Twitter and social responsibility

There probably isn’t a single person who actively uses Twitter who hasn’t had the “so what’s the big deal about Twitter” anyway conversation. It’s one of those things that’s hard to explain, either you get it or you don’t.

I always ask locals (since I mostly have this conversation with people who live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area) if they remember when the 35W bridge collapsed. It’s one of those things that Minnesotans instantly remember where they were when it happened, plus they remember the worry and fear in those hours after the collapse wondering where their loved ones were. Then I tell them how with one simple tweet, I let a whole lot of people know I was okay. At the same time I learned a lot of my friends were okay in the same manner.

Now history has given us a bigger, better, more important example of why Twitter is important and a big deal. Violent protests have broken out in Iran in the wake of their disputed election. And as Andrew Sullivan has so succinctly reported, the revolution is being live-tweeted.

It seems Twitter is the only way to get news out of Iran as the government tries to limit Internet access and communications out of the country and threatens foreign media correspondents with arrest.

What’s so great, and where the social responsibility comes in, is that Twitter and their network partners had scheduled a critical network upgrade yesterday but they postponed it because they realize what a vital tool Twitter is for Iranians and reporters right now.

And that’s just another reason to point to when someone asks “what’s the big deal about Twitter?”