Global Voices Online

Barbados Underground predicts that “the Internet ‘will' have a greater impact on the next Barbados General Election than it did on the last.”

Christoph Derndorfer of OLPC News provides the latest update straight from the mouth of President Alan Garcia regarding the One Laptop Per Child project in Peru.

Manoel Netto [pt] announces the arrival of Brazilian social media product Brasigo, a product based on user generated content tailored to Brazilians. “We fully believe in Social Media and we are investing our time, effort and creativity in the development of tools focused on that”

Japanese programmer and blogger id:amachang introduces [ja] Chart Maniax [ja], a service they developed for charting when and through which services web pages have been bookmarked. Services included are Hatena Bookmarks [ja], Livedoor Clip [ja], Delicious and Buzzurl [ja]. As an example, have a look at the chart for id:amachang's entry [ja].

Generation Y offers encouragement to a rural blogger (whom she refers to as “peasant of agile keys and posts as sharp as machetes”), who paints a picture of what blogging in Cuba is like: “Time is scarce and expensive. You have to resend posts and emails that are interrupted when the line goes down. You can’t read or respond to comments. There is little chance of establishing relationships with other bloggers…”

Blogger and lawyer Yōji Ochiai [落合洋司] reports on news [ja] that the Machida city council in Tokyo has made a written request [ja] for investigations into regulation regarding Google's Street View Service, which has sparked some negative reactions in Japan [ja]. “My position has been to oppose entirely the targeting, without careful consideration, of Internet services for legal regulation, “Ochiai writes. “However, I have a feeling that the issues that have led to the submission of this written request cannot be so easily brushed away.”

Herron Family News reports on a return visit to Azerbaijan to review preparations for next week's presidential election. The blog notes that the country's Central Electoral Commission has authorized the installation of web cams in polling stations so that voting can be monitored online.

Ushahidi, the crisis monitoring mashup originally developed to monitor post-election violence in Kenya is evolving: Steve Mutinda put together a working Ushahidi Java application - and surprised me with it, this Saturday. It works well, and he and Wilfred Mworia are hard at work on the Ushahidi API to ensure that this app and the Ushahidi iPhone app both can sync with the database easily.

Jonathan analyses advances in social media on the African continent: “Contrary to popular belief, Africa is not completely absent from the Internet. In fact, the continent at large is undergoing a connectivity revolution unlike anything it has ever seen.”