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The world is talking, are you listening?

Sokhanesabz says [fa] that people send SMS to each other inviting Iranians to protest against internet interruption in front of Ministry of Communication on Saturday 11th May.

According to Payvand site and several bloggers, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was swarmed by a group of Iranians protesting the loss of their money in the Tabriz Nasr Secured Loans Fund.

A high commander in Iran cyber police says Facebook is ‘the most disgusting spyware and the most dangerous warfare of the U.S.’ which is also ‘responsible for one third of divorces in Iran’.

Facebook and other famous social networking websites are blocked by Iranian authorities. They blame this services as ‘tools to promote unrest and in favor of regime change in Iran’.

An organization affiliated with Iran’s government says 60 percent of Iranians are connected to the internet, 40 percent of them are young people in their 20s.
Iran’s “Center For Managing National Development Of Internet”, MATMA, says more than 45 millions are connected to the internet,almost 2.5 millions of them through their mobile devices.

Thirty people have been killed after a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck near Bushehr in Iran. Several bloggers worry about the safety of Bushehr plant.

Ahmad Falsafi, an 82-year-old dentist and blogger who wrote in his blog for about eight years, has died. Many considered him as the oldest blogger in Iran.

The mother of dead blogger, Sattar Beheshti,said in a message in YouTube that she gave her son for Iran and added “we want our children to be free”. Sattar Beheshti died in “Cyber Police” detention facility last year.

Bloggers informed that Masuleh‘s 500 year old market was burnt in fire. The historical city of Masuleh has an age of eight hundred to a thousand years.

Several blogs and news sites reported that Iranian authorities have blocked many foreign-based virtual private networks, or VPNs, severely restricting access to many websites.

Hossein Derakhshan, a jailed Iranian blogger, wrote a letter to President Ahmadinejad and advised him to watch The Godfather movie and learns lessons from it. The blogger said Ahmadinejad had a “thirst to serve people but now it seems he has thirst for power”.

The Iran Media Program at the Annenberg School for Communication, present a new study: “Fights, Adapts, Accepts: Archetypes of Iranian Internet Use” by Arash Abadpour and Collin Anderson.

Reporters Without Borders and Google announced the name of the nominees for the 2013 Netizen Prize. Shiva Nazar Ahari, Iranian female human rights activist and blogger is among the nominees. Read more about Shiva here.

According to [fa] Iranian media, linking to filtered social networking sites such as Facebook and Google+ can be considered a crime under the “computer crimes law”. Read more on the “Law of Computer Crimes” here.

Mezrab continues to report about the detained journalists in Iran. The post includes a very personal story about a an Iranian woman who shares her prison experience.

The deputy parliament speaker says Tehran has ‘more than 1 million Facebook users’ and there are more than 200,000 in other big cities of Iran like Shiraz and Rasht. Hasan Aboutorabi regrets that ‘such a potential space is in the hands of our enemy and they deploy all of its capacities against us.’

Iran's police Commander in Chief, Esmaeil Ahmadi Moghaddam says police is looking for ‘smart control’ over social networking websites. He believes this ‘smart control’ is better than a full blocking and people may use their 'useful parts'.

M. Lynx Qualey, blogger, who is interested in Arab and Arabic literature, wrote a series of posts introducing acclaimed Arab poets, novelists, and short-story writers’ favorite Arab reads of 2012. She started with a list of nonfiction books, then followed by a list for poetry [En] and fiction [En].

Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, has launched his own Facebook page. The news was announced in his Twitter account. Both Facebook and Twitter are filtered in Iran.

 Iran has launched, Mehr (meaning affection in Persian),a video-sharing website to compete against YouTube.

Iranian authorities announced on Tuesday, 27th of November, flood in Brozjan killed at least four people. Watch the video here.

Iran Abad writes with irony that Iran's regime has an extraordinary talent to take Iranian economy back to the Stone Age.The blogger mentions several examples such as giving more incentives to buying luxury cars than purchasing medicine.

Several bloggers reported that security forces arrested ten members of Pan-Iranist Party in Iran.

Neshador writes media remained silent about this case. [Update:most of them were released after few days of detention]

Sources close to Iranian opposition say Sattar Beheshti, blogger and netizen, possibly died ‘due to tortures' while he was in detention. Beheshti got arrested last week in his home. His sister says “authorities asked us to prepare a grave for him and take his body tomorrow”.

Reporters Without Borders is ‘very worried about the state of health of eight women prisoners of conscience who began a hunger strike five days ago in protest against inhuman and degrading jail conditions'. These prisoners include three journalists and netizens; Mahsa Amrabadi, Jila Bani Yaghoob and Shiva Nazar Ahari.

A new campaign has started within the Iranian cyber space and social networks in support of prisoner of conscience, Nasrin Sotoudeh who has been on hunger strike since October 17. Many Iranian netizens have posted photos of white flowers in solidarity with Nasrin whose name in Persian means a specific type of flower from rose family, namely the “Rosa Canina” or “Dog Rose”.

According to several Iranian news sites,four people were arrested and charged with “propaganda activities against the regime and insulting officials in Facebook” in the southern city of Sirjan.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) announced that they are concerned about the health of Mohammad Reza Pourshajari, the jailed writer of the blog “Iran Land’s Report”. RSF says according to blogger's family “he is in a critical condition, suffering from kidney failure and aggravated by a lack of medical treatment”.

A bus in southwestern Iran overturned in southwestern Iran on Friday, October 19. Several Iranian bloggers urged the Minister of Education to resign as ‘a minimum reaction to this tragedy'. Iranian cyberspace accused the Iranian authorities for being irresponsible about the lives of people.

Here is a video film about Mehdi Karroubi and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, two Green Movement‘s leaders, who have been under house arrest for 600 days. Several Iranians in this video praise these two leaders’ courage.

According to [fa] several bloggers and news sites,Keyhan,a conservative newspaper has published an “offensive” cartoon of the Prophet Joseph.Ardakan says [fa] there are double standards in Iran and it seems conservative Keyhan feels safe contrary to many other newspapers in the same situation.