A few months ago, Ardroid was launched. Touted as the “first Arabic website” focused on reviews, tips, and tweaks related to Google's new Android OS. The website went into the war of words head on with its reviews of Android phones, and its comparisons to the iPhone and more recently the iPad. Most recently commenting on the latest remarks from Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO and mastermind, about Google:

The response from the Apple community came in quick, with the launch of iPhad - a technology website focused on the iPhone and the newly released iPad. And don't let the striking similarity in design fool you, they also mean business, and just like that in their Statement No. 1, they went on the offense:

And so, the battle begins for the hearts and minds and phones of Syrian and Arab techies.

If Google were a state-owned company…

- Search requests would have to be submitted in written form, on a special application, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 to 11 AM, at [the location where you're registered as a resident]. To do this, you'd have to stand in a line of 30 people.

- The written application would include the search request, as well as your date of birth, address at which you are registered, address of your actual place of residence, the number of children, your ID number, your passport data. With your request, you'd have to attach a color photo taken within the past three months (same type as the one on your travel passport). Three original copies of the written request would have to be submitted.

- The following documents would have to be additionally submitted along with your written request:

* a certificate confirming the absence of a criminal record;
* a certificate confirming the absence of debts for communal services [utilities], including a certificate confirming the absence of debts for heating since 2002;
* a certificate from a narcologist and a psychiatrist confirming competency;
* [military service certificate];
* a written consent note from parents […] and adult children, certifying that they are not opposed to your internet search request; if you have underage children, guardian board permission is needed;
* a decision from an expert commission of the Interior Affairs Ministry, certifying that your search would not lead to revealing state secrets (documents are accepted every third Saturday of every odd month from 4 to 4:30 PM);
* a decision of the regional department of the National Commission on the Issues of Morality, certifying that your search does not contain curses and pornography (documents are temporarily not accepted at the place of your registration, due to repairs);
* a certificate from the hospital confirming that you have had all the scheduled vaccinations and no harmful viruses would get into internet via your search;
* a certificate confirming the absence of other search requests that are currently being considered by [state company] “Googl'.”

- The following payments would have to be made before you submit your search request:

* the cost of the search (450 hryvnias) [approx. $56];
* insurance payment (8.50 hryvnias) [approx. $1];
* obligatory voluntary contribution to the Googl' of the Future Fund (93.11 hryvnias [$11.63], PLEASE HAVE THE EXACT AMOUNT READY, WE DON'T HAVE CHANGE!);

- Search request would be accepted only after you sign an Additional Agreement, by which you ascertain that you will not use other internet search services for three years since the day you sign the agreement. The agreement is signed in the presence of a notary public (the notary public service fee is 150 hryvnias [$18.75]).

- You should come no earlier than in 20 work days to pick up your “Quotation from the Internet” (the official name of the search results), and you'll have to stand in yet another line for that. You'll receive the quotation in printed form (printed on a dot matrix printer). Due to the lack of state budget funding, graphics that show up in the results of the search will not be printed.

- If the results aren't there yet, you should wait 20 work days more, after which you have the right to repeat your search request.

- If you own a website and provide free access to information, then, according to the Law #666-66 from February 38, 2010, due to the need to have state regulation of the information politics on the web, and in order to unify search services and allow more convenient access to information on the web for Ukrainian citizens, you are obliged:

* to urgently pass all the information from your website to the state company “Ukrainian Googl'” on 3.5-inch floppy disks (only disks produced by the private company “Disketa-Googl'” are allowed, the price of a single item is 25 hryvnias [$3.10]);
* once you receive the confirmation, [you have] to delete all the information from your website within five days.

We've collected our findings on a Future of ICT for Development special coverage page.

So what's being said?

After several months of dedicated analysis and writing about how ICT for development is covered on the web, here are some thoughts about the online availability of information about ICT4D – from academic articles, to conversation, commentary, and citizen media reflections on what works, what’s difficult and what is worth sharing.

It has been six years since the IDRC and Harvard held their first groundbreaking forum on ICTs and poverty. Since then there have been a great many zeros and ones spilled about practice and scholarship of ICT4D online. Much of this takes the form of research papers, books, and presentations produced by scholars or practitioners affiliated with institutions and nonprofit organizations.

It is, however, relatively more difficult to find blogs and citizen media content from unaffiliated individuals, and from those who experience the benefits, and sometimes challenges of internet technologies in developing-world contexts. While there are scattered discussions and commentaries, sustained, community-driven dialogue is not easy to find. This is perhaps not surprising, given the often complex and technical nature of the field.

Phone charging station in Uganda, 2008, by Ken Banks - kiwanja.net

There has been tremendous improvements in internet access and  explosive growth of cell phones in developing world, as Matthew Smith outlines in his essay for IDRC/Harvard’s latest conference, Communication and Human Development: The Freedom Connection? in September 2009.

However, GV’s research (led by Aparna Ray and John Liebhardt) has found ambiguous evidence of online discussion of these themes that advances beyond well-worn anecdotes of fishermen with mobile phones. Those discussions surely exist, if not online; a look at the Manthan Awards in South Asia, for example, gives us a window into communities of practitioners in this field, and the focus of their work.

In general, we observed that there are several categories of people writing online about ICT4D:

1. People who both understand grassroots development needs and are proficient in ICT. A very small percentage of online writers fall in this category. These people have the skills to develop tools/ techniques, speak the language of ICT4D, and are able to get exposure for their projects.
2. Academics who are interested in the field. They are able to develop concepts in ICT4D, and mostly run small research projects to prove/ disprove their hypotheses, build concepts, and make predictions. There is a lot of energy here - perhaps why we saw so many research papers in our web searches. These people explore and predict trends, but are not often in contact with grassroots folks, and rarely implement projects.
3. Everyone else either comes from the ICT community, and open to designing tools for development/ social projects, or people working in the  development sector who need ICT solutions but have relatively low/ no knowledge of ICT. These two sets of people do not usually speak the same language.

Broadly speaking, many development experts seem hesitant to learn technical skills and languages. They may want a ICT solutions, but there are numerous obstacles to engagement, including expertise, time, resources, and organizational culture. Hence ICT experts sense that development practitioners are rarely clear about helpful solutions.

Likewise, ICT tool developers may not involve development communities in the need analysis/ development phase, producing many solutions that are top-down, and without user support.

Solutions and strategies:

ICT4D is a vibrant theme, but also quite complex, and with little awareness outside of specialist communities. Our first months of coverage have captured some of the best of existing citizen media writing. A next step would be to fill the gaps in coverage and language that we found. Some approaches:

Continued engagement: Much more can be written, with a focus on clarifying who the audiences are for content.

Popularizing complex ideas: much of the content of the GV posts is news for those who are not in the ICT space; for ICT experts, it has less to offer. How stories are reported is key. Strategies include:

• Conducting interviews with experts and practitioners to simplify language and concepts for target audiences.
• Finding a common language and platform for dialogue among people both in grassroots development and in ICT technology development.
• Including writers from different perspectives and parts of the world.
• Highlighting the work of interesting ICT projects.
• Focusing on user experience and feedback.

数据显示13%的受访者为女性，87%为男性。这与大多数人的预测基本吻合，中文Twitter圈子阳气过重，男性推友应该鼓励身边的女性朋友上Twitter，不然，按照这个比例，在Twitter上找到女朋友的几率不会很大。

数据显示大多数推友的年龄在21-29岁之间，这部分推友占了将近70%的比例。…在接受调查的推友里，年龄最小的是12岁，最大的为55岁。下面是年龄分布直方图，很明显地，推友的年龄呈正态分布…

持有或即将持有本科学历的占了中文Twitter用户的绝大部分，硕士学历的推友是Twitter中文圈的第二大群体，接下来是大专学历的推友。

同时我们也应该注意到，一群高中生正在向Web2.0拥抱。

若干年前，有着自由思想的大学生做了一件轰动的事。现在，掌权者怎么可能轻易让大学生上Twitter？

将近一半的受访推友来自北京、上海、广东三地，接下来分别是：浙江、江苏、福建。。。这6个地区的推友占了总数的67%。从地图上看，这6个地区都位于沿海地区，经济相对比较发达。

从数据里可以看到，学生推友占了将近30%，然后是“计算机软、硬件”行业15%、“互联网产品相关”12.5%。如果将后两者归类为IT行业，那学生和IT人士占了推友的50%以上，他们是Twitter的主力军。

As for the question on why they choose to take all the trouble for getting access to Twitter, here is a list of their answer:

1、了解真相，开拓视野
2、用微博客随时随地记录生活、分享生活
3、获取资讯，关注民主政治
4、因为饭否被关了
5、每周要给火星同事扫盲（误），把twitter作为各种八卦消息来源
6、开始是为了follow喜欢的球星，后来渐渐喜欢上twitter的一切！
7、觉得twitter的交流方式很有趣
8、在这里信息无审查，信息最原始的传递逻辑得以在twitter保留
9、打发时间
10、看腿叔（@kcome）
11、我从可能吧知道这个东西，我觉得作为一名党员应该尽可能的多了解世界。
12、在这儿我想说什么就说什么。而不用去考虑，这句话我该不该说，该怎么说。会不会说过了而触犯了什么“法律”。 这就是自由的味道，我喜欢这种味道。
13、在政治灌输很严重的军校，Twitter让我能保持独立的公民意识。
14、大学老师介绍
15、这里说谎的人少
16、工作需要
17、新闻系学生的必然选择
18、仅凭对新技术的热爱
19、最早是因为某暗恋的女生在上Twitter，所以我也…
20、为什么不上twitter？

Dr. Alexander Voiskounsky at Psychology Department, MSU

Dr. Alexander E. Voiskounsky is one of the pioneers of the Internet research in Russia. He is a deputy chair of the general psychology department and a director of a psychology & IT lab at the Moscow State University. Voiskounsky has been studying the psychological side of information technologies for 30 years and is considered the leading Russian expert on cyberspace psychology. He also authored and edited several books in Russian and co-edited two books in English. Among his research topics are hackers’ motivation, gaming and Internet addiction. He played and continues to play a significant role in making the Internet a legitimated field of research in Russia and building a bridge between Russian and international Internet research communities.

Dr. Voiskounsky, is there anything special in Russian scientific approach to the Internet research?

A major part of Russian psychology is based on Vygotsky’s theory. It says that the human mind is developing due to signs systems which human beings acquire and develop. Vygotsky emphasized that human higher mental processes are of social origin, their development based on mediated forms of behavior. Mediation is fundamental since it includes acquiring and using instruments: material tools, signs, and semiotic systems. The information technologies, computers and the Internet belong to the most complicated signs systems and semiotic instruments. Thus, Russian psychology is very likely to include Internet related studies into the body of psychological research.

For how long have you been studying the Internet?

The origin of the studies was in the mid 80s when two groups have been analyzing the Internet. One was headed by Michael Cole who came from the United States and brought equipment and some funding. He concentrated on school children and scientists as two perspective groups that close to development of these technologies. The second group was headed by my teacher professor Tikhomirov. I was the first and, at least for a while, the only researcher and conducted some studies long before the Internet has been available in the Soviet Union. I was lucky to meet some researchers from the Academy of Science of Soviet Union that had access to new-born telecommunications. The word “Internet” was unknown at that time. They did not give me an access - it was forbidden - but they allowed me to study the listings of all communications and I have done some content analysis. After that, in 1991, I got a full access to the Internet.

At the outset, the psychologists were the most prepared team to do the study.  Later, other disciplines joined the Internet research field including sociologist, philologists, philosophers and educationalists.

What is the current state of the Internet research in Russia?

Internet studies in Russia have profound background and good history. But nowadays “good” studies are not sufficient at all. I wouldn’t say the research component in new technologists is big enough. There are some sporadic PhD studies or some small books published by small teams of enthusiasts and volunteers in the field.  I devote 90 percent of my time to this field of study. And when I go abroad, I am doing my best to pretend that in Russia has a well-developed field of cyber psychology or cyber-related studies.

Why do you think that the Internet in Russia is not researched enough?

Last year I got a letters from a young woman who worked on her PhD thesis at a university somewhere in western Siberia. She wrote that the research council dismissed her study because she used a methodology of online surveying and all the respondents were virtual persons and the council suspected that  the woman could have done all 500 responses. She asked me what to do. I have sent her a couple of methodological papers. Well, I was precautious enough that before doing online studies we wrote methodological papers that the new sort of methodology is worth in psychology. However,  many of those students who are interested in these studies don't want to have problems with research councils and they choose more stable research topics.

So what are the main topics of your research?

We studied the motivation of computer hackers. I guess it was the first psychological study of hackers in the world. The results were quiet interesting since we used the methodology of positive psychology or flow experience developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. We have found that the most experienced and the least experienced hackers have been experiencing the flow. The flow means that you are interested in the work you are good at. You work full time and you pay a great attention to your work. But it was different with the middle group of relatively experienced or relatively inexperienced hackers. They do not experience the flow. We have made a model saying that you can not keep being in the flow if you are developing .

Flow-based model of computer hackers’ motivation.

Russian hackers are very infamous. How you can apply this approach to help solve this problem?

I have given my paper to juridical authorities. The goal is not only to punish hackers but to prevent them from down the criminal path. It’s a good root for newbies hackers to be taught how to avoid becoming criminals. In a way, this is an educational challenge for educationalist. You should push the newbies  toward the route of acquiring and getting knowledge, not acquiring new hacking challenges. The devote experience show that many former hacker are not hackers now but experts for computer security and they have gone through this route by themselves.

So what actually should be done?

The solution is in moral development of adolescences. Teenagers know quite well the moral rules and moral imperatives. But I have asked many of them what they do when they have no real-life contact with a person, when your partner is a virtual partner. They hesitated: “Why not get money, get  free software or free music from someone who will pay for that.” They are not criminals. They will never steal a wallet from my pocket. But they might be criminals when they don’t treat a virtual person as a real one and this is the challenge of the Internet age. When they distantly break the system, they laugh and feel brave. So, there is a need for brief course of moral education to be developed worldwide. It should be a course for how to apply the moral rules in cyberspace.

Do you have any other fields of research?

Mostly, I do what my students like to do and they like gaming. We have conducted a lot of studies on online gaming. We have constructed a factor analytical model of implicit knowledge the gamers have about the psychological consequences of their gaming. There are eight factors, which gamers are aware of. To my surprise,  the research paper was called one of the 11 best papers among 1,500 papers on human computer interaction international conference last year in San Diego.

I also organized a symposium of psychiatrists and psychologists who are doing a study on the Internet addiction and published a book related to this issue.  Many people are convinced that the Internet addiction will be very soon officially treated as a psychiatric diagnosis. But the book included one or two papers saying that the Internet addiction was not a sort of sickness but it was a stage of development for human beings to have more profound knowledge and even get energy from the Internet to self development. But the majority of researchers wrote that the addicted had to be cured.

What kind of research your and other groups do on blogging and social networking in Russia?

My group hasn’t done studies on blogging or social networking. I know just one or two groups that are doing some  studies on blogging. One is at Psychology Department at St. Petersburg University and the other is probably at Journalism Department of the Moscow State University.

Do you see anything special about the role of Internet in Russia?

It was my general idea that the Internet is a way of departing from totalitarian rule that we came from. When there was only one correct opinion and no alternatives, people had very few possibilities to learn about other points of view. The Internet made it possible to learn about diverse ideas. There are billions of new networkers today who came from totalitarian countries. I always say that the Internet is a good school for departing from totalitarian ideas.

So do you believe that RuNet contributes to democratization in Russia?

I think this was true for those who came to the Internet in the 90's and at the beginning of a new century. And then the Internet became a sort of way back. I mean social networks like Odnoklassniki.ru . This is not a way to development. Psychologically it is quite interesting because it is an experiment in new identities. My students have done a lot of interviews with social networkers. All of them experience double,  triple or many identities. But I don’ t think  this is very interesting in their ideological or political growth because social networks are very well integrated into the existing political structures.

Why do you think so? It is very popular to consider social networks as a platform that can contribute to development of political activism.

About 15 or 20 years ago, at the time of newsgroup in Usenet, we had a lot of political groups among Russian speaking Internet users. It was just after the collapse of the Soviet Union and very hot discussions among those who supported and opposed it were ongoing. Gradually, it disappeared. When there are no major political events, politics is an issue for a very small group of people who are interested in it. When some important process emerges, the number of people who are interested in politics is increasing. Generally, artificial efforts to increase number of politically active people are not helpful not only in Russia but any other region. Moreover, there is very limited ability to increase a number people who are interested in politics. Policies that aim to increase number of people who involved in political discussion are very limited in their ability to achieve results. There is a limit for how many people you can attract with presents, lotteries and other “candies.” If you stop doing it, the people will leave, and you will have again the same small core of people who were interested in politics before. Therefore, social networks are not different from other spaces of life. Most of people are interested in meeting each other and other things, but not politics.

What are the most promising directions for research of the Internet in Russia?

I am mostly interested in cross-cultural research and for this purpose we need good cooperation with researchers from other countries, as well as common methodologies and budgets.

And how do you solve the situation when the importance of Internet research is not recognized enough in Russian academic community. May be establishing an Institute for Internet research could help?

There are some gradual improvements in regard to status of the Internet research in Russia. We are making some steps forward. As for the Research Center for the Internet, on the one hand it could be good if we had a place with budgets for Internet research. On the other hand, I am afraid that this center would acquire an ideological agenda. Therefore, my answer is that probably we don’t need this kind of center. It would be better if these projects will be grassroots projects that developed from bottom to the top rather than being managed by some “pundits” from the top.

Dr.Voiskounsky, thank you for your time and hospitality at the MSU Psychology Department.

For more information about Internet research in Russia read:

Alexander Voiskounsky, Cyberpsychology and Computer-mediated Communication in Russia: Past, Present and Future, Russian Journal of Communication, Winter 2008, first issues http://marquettejournals.org/images/RJC_Vol_1.pdf p.78

List of paper by Alexander Voiskounsky    http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/v/Voiskounsky:Alexander_E=.html

Barcamp Yangon Logo

Barcamp Yangon 2010, the first barcamp to be held in Myanmar was a very successful event, with a turnout of more than 2700 people for the two day event.

Barcampers at the Opening Ceremony

The event was from January 23 to 24, and held at Myanmar Info-tech, a software park in Yangon.

According to planet.com.mm,

The number of people who have registered at the website to attend barcamp was over 3000. It has been said that this is the largest amount of attendees among barcamps convening around the world. One of the attendee commented that even though this was the first barcamp to be held in Myanmar, many professionals and enthusiasts has attended, making it a very successful event.

Wi-fi internet access was provided at the venue, so people were able to blog, update their Facebook status, and tweet about the events live.

List of Workshops for the First Day

A few bloggers who have attended barcamp wrote about their experience there. Such as Zaw Zaw, who posted up photos of the event.

Madyjune also wrote about her two-day experience at the barcamp volunteering as a translator.

During the barcamp, six rooms are provided for the barcampers and he/she is given an hour for the presentation and discussions. For the first period, I was sitting in Hall 1 listening to U Ye Myat Thu explaining about how to convert from Win Myanmar font to Unicode without losing format and the original English texts being changed into Myanmar words, but during the middle of the presentation, I had to go to Room 101 where a presentation was given about Podcasting. I had heard about Podcasting before, but I have never really tried it before since I thought it requires high speed internet connection. The presenter said that one of the best ways to look for podcasts is to use iTune software. Too bad I can’t install any software at cybercafés. Otherwise, I could check it out even thought the connection isn’t that good most of the times.

Also, rmlowe, a foreigner who had participated in the event wrote about his experience at the barcamp, and in Yangon, and his impression on Myanmar IT sector.

At one point I asked how many people were actively involved in creating or maintaining Web sites or Web-based applications. Only three people raised their hands. Later I asked how many knew what XML was, and only one hand was raised. In both cases I found the number of affirmative responses shockingly low. My impression was that there were a number of factors that make it hard for Burmese to get involved in Web development (at least on a personal level rather than as an employee of a company or government organisation), including unreliable and filtered Internet access, and difficulty in registering Internet domain names.

A couple of the examples in my presentation used examples that involved e-commerce (although there’s nothing in SAML that’s specific to e-commerce scenarios). Belatedly I realized how inappropriate those examples were. E-commerce doesn’t exist in Burma. Neither do credit cards.

Barcamp Yangon was organized by Myanmar Computer Association and barcamp organizers who are from IT field.

SourceForge justifies the move saying they are only following American law. Which is more or less the same argument Chinese government spokespeople make when questioned about their country's Internet censorship.

SourceForge has been blocked by China before. Hearing word of this new Great Firewall of America left some Chinese coders wondering if they might now start getting blocked from the other end and what can be done about it.

Photo from William Lone's Moonlight Blog.

At CNBeta on the day the news broke, ugmbbc wrote:

在今天，开源精神遭到了践踏，SourceForge会因为他们被要求屏蔽流氓国家而去美国国会抗议么？

这是个棘手的问题，难道仅仅因为这几个国家的极少数的一部分人的极端行为，就要整个国家遭到惩罚么？开源软件为这些受到压迫和发展中的国家提供了重要的基础设施。希望美国政府能够看到对这些国家基础设施和羽翼未丰的产业带来的打击。

Over at geek community Solidot, free-as-in-freedom notes that this move by SourceForge follows earlier restrictions on users from these five countries, allowing them to browse the site and download source code, but barring them from contributing any. Comments there include:

Alpha.Roc:
SourceForge 还是要遵守美国法律的呀？

alvan:
SourceForge为什么一定要遵从自由软件精神？软件只是代码，所以可以自由中立；但是网站是离不开服务器的，你的服务器放在哪个国家，就要遵从这个国家的法律——这个天经地义呀。

pynets:
这是人家的自由

erlv at his technical blog LingCC looks at the implications of politics encroaching upon the open source movement:

每个喜欢互联网技术，拥护开源的人都不想让开源沦为政治工具，但这是一个政治主导的世界，你得听政府的，政府是老大，你在政府的地盘上混，管你什么道义，什么自由，什么开源，统统只是工具。

我不是在鼓吹网络长城多么利国利民，但我们确实需要一种手段，让我们与国外能自由交流的同时，能摆脱对他们的依赖。正如现在国内，开源爱好者们都很乐于将自己的代码贡献出来，给开源社区，但当它变成政治工具的时候，我们如何取得该属于我们的权利？

SourceForge.net好像在国内还没有官方的镜像服务器. 如果我们的官老爷们真的为我国的信息产业处心积虑，鞠躬尽瘁的话，倒不如拿支持防火长城项目1%的钱，作为政府鼎力支持，在国内建几个开源镜像服务器，这样，至少我们还能有所有的源码，至少我们有了独立自主！