Technology Podcast 238: China and the Internet, Andrew Lih and Wikipedia Part II, and Maker Faire Crosses the Big Pond

April 06, 2009

This week's edition of The World's Technology Podcast (WTP 238) leads with a story on two recent reports concerning China and the Internet. The first, as you can see from graphic, is called Tracking GhostNet. It was researched and written by an outfit called the Information Warfare Monitor. This is a complementary effort to something I've written about before on the blog: the OpenNet Initiative(ONI). The people behind ONI started the Information Warfare Monitor (IWM) to do more extensive looks at what happens when nations, companies, and other entities go on the cyber-offensive. In this case, GhostNet refers to a massive south and south-east Asian cyber-espionage ring discovered by IWM researchers. More than 1,000 computers in more than 100 countries were targeted. And not just any computers. We're talking embassies, diplomatic missions, human rights groups and the like. And while it looks like Chinese computers were involved, you'll hear how hard (and illegal) it is to prove the Chinese government is behind it (something Beijing whole-heartedly denies). We have an extended interview with Ronald Deibert, one of the principal investigators on the project.

The other report is, admittedly, only partly about China and the Internet. The US-based rights group Freedom House has spent the last two years running a pilot project to monitor and gauge to overall level of Internet freedom in some 15 countries, ranging from Cuba to South Africa, from the United Kingdom to Iran. The result is Freedom on the Net. It ties into the story above because, perhaps not surprisingly, China earns a "not free" ranking from Freedom House when it comes to what the Chinese people can and can't access, what they can and can't say, online. I speak with Karin Karlekar, managing editor of the Freedom on the Net project.

As promised, we also have the second half of our interview Andrew Lih, author of The Wikipedia Revolution. You can read more about that from last week's post. At the end of the interview, I have some questions for him about Wikipedia and its history of being blocked, and now unblocked (at least most of it) in China.

And we end with a segment dedicated to all you Do-It-Yourself tech lovers out there. Make Magazine's been running Maker Faire since 2006. The Faires are true celebrations of personal creativity and craftiness: a solar-powered chariot pulled by an Arnold Schwarzenegger robot, anyone? Now, the party has moved across the big pond, to Britain. Listen in to hear how Maker Faire tranlates into Geordie (it was held in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne) and all those other lovely dialects of the Queen's English. Good fun!

Also, big thanks to all you Twitter and Facebook followers who put shame aside and sent in your selections for the "What was the first song/album/band I listened to on a Sony Walkman?" question. The soundtrack to this week's podcast, for better of worse, is yours.

(Maker Faire photo by ©h@n on Flickr. Top image a screengrab from IWM).

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PRI's The World Technology Podcast 234: The One with the Talking Sheep

March 09, 2009

Tech Podcast 234 begins as any good technology podcast should. Namely, with a web-surfing sheep called Shep that can't seem to reach the site he wants. Now Shep is actually Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law at Harvard and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. For a number of years now, Jonathan's research interests have included documenting and analyzing Internet filtering globally. He helped author Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering as part of the OpenNet Initiative (ONI). But he wanted something to complement the academically rigorous and relatively slow research done by ONI. So, he helped create something called Herdict, an effort in crowd-sourcing reports of blocked websites. "Verdict" from the "herd:" get it?

We then rove to Belgium with reporter Cyrus Farivar. No, not in search of beer or chocolate. But instead, to a Belgian University that recently ran a test of what some think might be answer to all the hanging chads that have played American elections in the past. It's called "voter-verifiable" voting, and if you know some math, you can -- all by yourself -- ensure that your vote was counted, and counted correctly. It's called Helios the brainchild of cryptography guru Ben Adida.

Moving south, we turn up in Italy to see if Italians can give up one of the their greatest addictions for Lent -- text messaging on their mobile phones. And we hear about how some Italian politicians are being given special, shall we say, dispensation in an effort to get them to sign onto a fingerprint-enabled voting system.

And we end with a check-in with Ken Banks, the man behind one of the most interesting and useful mobile phone tools I've ever written about: FrontlineSMS. Ken jokingly and lovingly calls it "software with an attention deficit disorder." He's not helping, because he just keeps adding new features. The latest one is something called FrontlineForms. If FrontlineSMS turns a mobile phone network into a mass messaging system, then FrontlineForms is designed to turn that same network into a mass data collection and storage system. It sounds like small potatoes, but in many parts of the world, it could help collect health data, agricultural data, and even human rights data. Good stuff.

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PRI's The World: Technology Podcast 219

November 17, 2008

It's that time again. Yes, time for a new edition of The World's Technology Podcast (WTP 219). And yes, flu season -- that's one strain of the nasty little bugger right over there. Much has been made of late of the ability to track outbreaks of influenza, and try to stop those outbreaks before they become pandemics. This week, Google announced Google Flu Trends, which is designed to track spikes in flu in the United States based on the frequency that certain search terms ("flu," "aches," and "fever" anyone?) are plugged into Google. We start the podcast with a double dose of analysis on this effort, first from Professor Steve Field, Chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners in London. And then, we hear about another disease-tracking effort funded by Google called HealthMap, from one of the project's co-founders, Dr. John Brownstein.

Then, we turn to a new wrinkle in the US Army's recruitment efforts. You may have heard this week about TroopTube, the military's answer to YouTube, which, along with other social networking sites, have been put in the brig by the Pentagon. That's not the only on-line effort. We hear about a new Army website designed to answer questions from both recruits and their parents about service in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Switching gears a bit, we return to Pop!Tech 2008, and a conversation that was recorded in a fish restaurant. The interview's not with a fish, but it is with a guy called Chip. Go figure. Chip Ransler is one of the crew behind an outfit called Husk Power Systems. The whole idea is to provide a low-cost way to turn discarded rice husks (at right) -- and if you listen to the interview you'll find out just how much goes to waste -- into electricity in rural areas in India. It's not the only effort in this regard, but Husk Power's bringing an interesting business model to the mix. Essentially, the idea is to eventually franchise small power generation plants to local towns and businesspeople.

Next up, a quick look at the situation in Burma. You might remember that bloggers were crucial in getting information to the outside world during the crack-down against monk-led protests. Now, news comes that harsh sentences have been handed down to a number of dissidents, including Nay Phone Latt, whose Burmese language blog was one of the main sources of information during the protests of December, 2007. He was sentenced to more than 20 years for "creating public alarm." More via the Committee to Protect Bloggers here.

And finally, an audio extravaganza related to a story I blogged earlier this week about an English gentleman who is blogging his grandfather's letters home from the trenches of World War I. You get the two previous pieces I did on Bill Lamin and his grandfather, Private Harry Lamin. And we also hear from a colleague of mine about how Bill's blogging inspired her to do something similar with her own grandfather's letters from World War I.

(Flu photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Rice Husk photo by ark via Everystockphoto)

Blogs Bring World War I (and More) Back to Life

November 11, 2008

Today is Veterans' Day (Armistice Day in the UK) and I wanted to find an appropriate story. Mission accomplished. The man pictured at left is Pvt. Harry Lamin, a laceworker from Ilkeston, Derbyshire, England. In 1917, Harry was drafted to fight in World War I. He was sent first to the trenches in Flanders, where he managed to survive months of some of the most gruesome fighting, the most inhuman conditions, the world has ever seen. Then, he was sent to Italy to fight the Austrians. How do I know all this? Well, Harry Lamin's a blogger. OK, that's not entirely accurate. Harry's grandson, Bill Lamin, has spent the last two and half years blogging his grandfather's letters. Bill posts them 90 years to the day after they were written or postmarked. I've had the good fortune to follow the story for close to two years now. Here's the original radio piece (June 2007), and a follow-up (February 2008). It has been an incredible journey for Bill, Harry, and for readers. When Bill began blogging his grandfather's letters (found in a drawer in his house, they were written in indelible purple pencil), he figured 50 or 100 World War I buffs might find them interesting. The site's had more than two million hits. Bill quit his day job (teaching), and has a deal to turn the blog into a book.

Obviously, Harry's words have hit a chord worldwide. Bill puts that down to Harry being "an ordinary man living through an extraordinary situation," and for conveying so well in his letters all that is most horrific and mundane. Readers have been following along, day to day, wondering what will happen to Harry. Will the letters suddenly stop, possibly meaning the end of Harry? Or, will the letters carry on and follow Harry back to England, and home? The blog format nicely augments this kind of narrative tension. Many days, my first stop on the old RSS feed is to check to see if there's an update from Harry.

Answers of a sort can be found in the piece I filed today.

Much has been written of late about the death of the blog. Maybe, maybe not. Harry's letters wouldn't really work as tweets on Twitter, although some of George Orwell's diary entries might. By posting Harry's letters as a blog, Bill's managed not only to re-create the past, but also create a legion of readers; readers who have taken inspiration from Bill's example, and have, in turn, helped him answer nagging historical questions and fill in gaps in the record.

Crowd-sourced history, right before your eyes. I'm glad the Harry survived the war, and I'm glad Bill didn't decide to kill his blog...

(Photo courtesy of Bill Lamin)

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