Global Voices » Elena Ignatova

Macedonia: Global Voices Featured on a TV Show

Elena Ignatova — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:11:43 +0000

GV author Filip Stojanovski was interviewed [MKD] for the TV show Nie (”We”) on the topic of “Kale, Internet, political parties, Facebook!? Whose fault is it?”, where he spoke about the importance of citizen media and Global Voices. The show also included a segment of Ethan Zuckerman's TED talk.

Global: e-Waste - Recycle or Reuse?

Elena Ignatova — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:07:09 +0000

‘WEEE-man' at London South Bank, by Flickr user polymer808, under Creative Commons Attribution License

Today, numerous households and businesses are constantly creating great amounts of e-waste (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment, or WEEE) and this presents environmental and health threats, as these devices are compiled of toxic substances.

According to StEP (Solving the e-Waste Problem),

E-waste is a term used to cover almost all types of electrical and electronic equipment that has or could enter the waste stream. Although e-waste is a general term, it can be often considered to cover TV’s, computers, mobile phones, white goods (fridges, washing machines, dryers etc.), home entertainment and stereo systems, toys, toasters, kettles – almost any household or business item with circuitry or electrical components with power or battery supply.

Rapid product innovations and replacement, especially in ICT and office equipment, combined with the lower prices for many electrical goods, are escalating the problem with e-waste.

e-Waste management can be divided into reuse or recycling of the old equipment.

Tony Roberts highlights the magnitude of the problem on his blog, Laptop Burns. He writes:

[…] We are creating a toxic time-bomb of over 20 billion items of eWaste that demands our urgent attention. The UN estimates that in 2009 that there were 4.6 billion mobile phones in use worldwide (http://bit.ly/qtwGU). According to World Bank World Development Indicators there were 2.6 billion radios in use in 2005 (http://bit.ly/1KW5U6) and 2 billion TVs (http://bit.ly/1KW5U6). Gartner Research shows that there are now over 1 billion computers in use worldwide (http://bit.ly/uxy68). These volumes are rising rapidly: we now produce and consume over 1 billion additional mobile phones every year. The size of this problem is unprecedented.

[…]

Fortunately there is no mystery about how to end eWaste. We must reduce the carbon footprint of mining and manufacture and reduce the toxics used in the production of EEE. We must agree a common policy framework internationally to promote reuse of working EEE, and recycle all of our own WEEE as well as outlawing the dumping and export of eWaste. And we must enforce the Polluter Pays Principle.

Haley Bowcock discusses reusing old equipment as an alternative to recycling:

[…] There is huge scope for reusing unwanted ICTs, as they are often replaced long before the end of their productive lives, due to rapid product innovation and consumer desires for the latest model. Unwanted ICTs, however, often end up in landfill or enter recycling chains. While there are environmental and human health benefits to safely the recycling end-of-life electronics, these are less pronounced for unwanted ICTs that are yet to reach the end of their productive lives. In fact, empirical research has indicated that reusing a computer is up to 20 times more energy efficient than recycling it.

So, reuse should be promoted and where shown to be the most beneficial waste management option, like with ICT equipment and many other unwanted consumer items, maximised. Fortunately, there are recent developments that suggest reuse may be getting the recognition it deserves. […]

She also links to a special report, Why Reuse is Better Than Recycling, by Computer Aid International, which lists several key findings and recommendations:

Key findings:

ICT production is energy and material intensive, and ICTs contain substances that are hazardous, valuable or both, so keeping them out of landfill makes clear sense

High levels of product replacement and the concentration of energy intensity in the ICT production rather than use phase (80 and 20 percent, respectively) means that any activity that extends the life of ICTs–such as reuse–should be prioritised

Reusing working computers is up to 20 times more energy efficient than recycling them. Also, reuse has lower resource depletion costs than recycling. Thus, the waste hierarchy, which has reuse as more environmentally beneficial than recycling, equally applies to unwanted ICTs as to other wastes

While ICTs are often replaced long before the end of their productive lives, their reuse brings additional benefits, such as providing access to those unable to afford them new

The superior performance of reuse has been recognised in EU legislation. The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive contains language that prioritises reuse, though a lack of specific reuse targets means that recycling often becomes the practical reality. More needs to be done in the EU and elsewhere to reap the many benefits of reuse

Recommendations:
To realise the many benefits of reuse, various stakeholders involved in the management of end-of-life ICTs (and other e-wastes) need to ensure the following:

Producers need to reduce waste and environmental pollution by designing reuse into their products. Resulting products would have clear upgrade paths and could be easily taken apart for repair and recycling. Too many products have obsolescence designed in. Product instructions should promote reuse over recycling.

Consumers need to maximise product life by postponing replacement until equipment has reached the genuine end of its productive life. Consumers can prioritise reuse over recycling by donating working equipment for reuse and only recycling equipment when it has genuinely reached the end of its productive life.

Governments need to introduce targets and standards for reuse and monitor their attainment. Public education about the waste hierarchy and the environmental importance of prioritising reuse over recycling would be a valuable contribution as would mandating the segregation of reusable equipment at waste collection sites.

In the post titled Where Do I Recycle My Old Electronics?, on the Sustainable Electronics Initiative blog, Aida Sefic Williams published a link to Electronic Take-Back and Donation Programs, and gave links to the websites where those who want to recycle could erase personal information from cell phones and computers.

What do you do with your old equipment?

Global: Greek to English, Chinese to Russian, and Spanish to Macedonian

Elena Ignatova — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:56:00 +0000

This post is part of our special coverage Languages and the Internet.

We all have heard of funny situations when poor translation of idiomatic expressions from one language has produced ridiculous meaning in another. Translation of idioms is indeed one of the biggest challenges in translation, both for humans and for machines. The main difficulty lies in the linguistic character of idioms, whose meaning cannot be derived from the meaning of the constituent words. For example, the well worn out example of the English idiom to kick the bucket, literally meaning ‘to die,' has nothing to do with either kicking or with the bucket.

WikIdioms is a new online resource that aims at helping translators to cope with this challenge. We talked with the creator of the site, Pavel Kats, and with one of its contributors, Yasna Trandafilovska, so that they could explain the service on their own in the best manner.

Q: Pavel, could you introduce Wikidioms in a couple of sentences?

A: Well, basically the idea is to provide a web environment where people would help each other to cope with the translation of idioms, maybe one of the toughest challenges in translation. Of course, when I say ‘translating an idiom,' I do not mean literal translation, rather an equivalent idiomatic expression in the target language, or any other means to convey the meaning. The project is collaborative in its heart, therefore the web is an ideal place for it.

Q: How is the community organized?

A: Most of the community members are professional translators who find some time in between their translation jobs to help us. These people are very well aware of the challenges of translating idiomatic expressions, as they do it themselves all the time. But we do not limit the contributors to translators, and we have also seen significant contributions from language enthusiasts unrelated to translation business. See, many people love to cope with linguistic challenges when it is about their native languages.

Q: Can you give us a bit of statistics? How many contributors, in how many languages…

A: The actively contributing community counts more than 100 translators and growing. The project is rather young, but we are already proud to have more than 30 thousand expressions in more than 30 languages. And the sky is the limit…

Q: Who can contribute to the site?

A: Well, as I mentioned above we do not limit our contributors, so anyone can. Naturally, such a policy requires some level of moderation on the contributed content and this moderation is done by several members of our community. We also invite professional translators who would like to help beyond sporadic contributions to contact us directly. There is a number of specific projects, all connected to multilingual translation, that we are developing inside WikIdioms, and we are looking for partners.

Q: Why should we use the site?

A: An example that fits here best. Imagine you are translating a Global Voices article from English to other languages and the article contains an English expression ‘It’s Greek to me!’ in the sense that some text is completely obscure to the speaker. How would you convey the same meaning to other languages in the same picturesque way? Now, with the help of WikIdioms you know that other languages also have their ways to express the same idea: Russians refer to Chinese and Macedonians….to Spaniards!

Thanks, Pavel!

Q: Yasna, how did you become involved in Wikidioms and why?

A: My involvement with WikIdioms happened out of the blue when a Greek colleague and friend of mine sent me an e-mail with Pavel’s call for translators to contribute to Wikidioms. Since I have been working as a translator for quite a while, I noticed that when it comes to the Macedonian language, it is quite difficult to find sources and dictionaries on the web that would help all the translators do their jobs quickly, properly and efficiently. So I realized that this is a great opportunity to change the situation. But, because it is not possible for one person to know everything and because languages are living organisms that change and develop continuously, I would like to invite all my colleagues, and especially those of the Global Voices' Lingua teams throughout the world, to visit us and contribute.

Q: You are also a contributor for Global Voices in Macedonian, can you tell us how you found out about the project and what motivated you to join?

A: I have been living in Greece for the last 11 years. Because I am married to a Greek, at home we speak Greek. With time, I noticed that I started forgetting words of my mother tongue and that was very annoying. I started searching for a solution and I found it in translating various texts on Global Voices. I think it is very stimulating because there are no deadlines, no stress, no rush and I think that when you do something just for the pleasure of it, the result is much, much better.

This post is part of our special coverage Languages and the Internet.

Yasna Trandafilovska helped to compile this post.

Macedonia: Law on Electronic Communications Invades Citizens' Privacy

Elena Ignatova — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:01:56 +0000

On June 16, 2010, the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia adopted changes to the Law of Electronic Communications, which now violates the privacy of the citizens. With these changes, the Ministry of Interior Affairs will have constant and direct access to the electronic communications networks, which is against the fundamental postulates of the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia. You can read more on the negative aspects of this law in the “Call for protection of citizens’ privacy in the Republic of Macedonia,” published by Metamorphosis: Foundation for Sustainable ICT Solutions.

BoingBoing published an article titled Macedonia introduces universal, deep telco/Internet wiretapping; hardly any MPs bother to vote, stating this:

A reader writes, “Today the Law of Electronic Communications was amended in the Macedonian parliament with 55 for and 9 votes against (of 120 total, 91 were present, the remainder abstained). In a very Orwellian manner, the law grants the government constant and direct access to electronic communication networks (mainly telcos and internet providers) and obliges the providers of these services to enable the government (Ministry of Interior) to download of traffic data without oversight, through equipment which provides an interface to logs for phone-calls, TCP/UDP/IP traffic and every other means of transferring data to and from machines. The provided link is from an NGO that started to raise awareness for the law, but sadly as the government here doesn't pay much attention to independent thinking, they ignored the whole initiative.”

GV author Filip Stojanovski, who blogs at ;) Razvigor, in his post “Amendment 1984 of the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia” [MKD], shares an excerpt from the Constitution:

As a reminder, Article 17 from the Constitution:

(1) The freedom and confidentiality of correspondence and other forms of communication is guaranteed.
(2) Only a court decision may authorize non-application of the principle of the inviolability of the confidentiality of correspondence and other forms of communication, in cases where it is indispensable to a criminal investigation or required in the interests of the defense of the Republic.

He continues, giving his opinion on the Law:

The negative aspects of this step by the government are tremendous: for the people who now can be “legally” eavesdropped on without court order, and without any possibility to prevent potential abuse, but also for Macedonia's international reputation.

At the end of his post, he calls for action:

It is necessary for the public to see the consequences from this act and to declare its opinion. If you care about your privacy, and the privacy of your loved ones, get them to be active on the subject. Share information, and join the future activities for protection of personal data.

[…]

Is there a way to know which Parliament member voted for and against these changes? It would be great if you write them an email or on their Facebook profiles what your opinions on this act are. And, of course, remind those of them who can read to read the Constitution, at least once. […]

“Withdrawal of the undemocratic changes of the Law on Electronic Communications” [MKD] is a “cause” on Facebook for those who want to support the initiative.

For further discussion on the topic you can follow hashtag #privatnost on Twitter [MKD].

Macedonia: Student Protest Ends in Violence

Elena Ignatova — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:15:12 +0000

Don't rape Skopje by Harald Schenker

Recently, the Macedonian government decided to build an Orthodox church with public financing on the main square of Skopje, a decision that the citizens of the city disapproved of. In spite of numerous online campaigns and discussions, a group of students – “First Arhi (Architect) Brigade” – decided to organize a protest called “The First Architectonical Rebellion” against the building of the church in Skopje. They set up a Facebook group [mkd] to post their demands. The blog skopje2803 posted a translation of their demands:

1. We demand an official position of the Faculty of Architecture [at the University of] Skopje on developments concerning the city’s public spaces in the interest of society.

2. We demand a professional debate before every key venture for building projects.

3. We demand transparent competitions, announcements, and urbanistic surveys, as well as commissions with representatives and consultants from Macedonia and abroad, NON-PARTY bodies that will decide about such buildings. The final decision must be sanctioned through a referendum, as practiced in European cities in such cases. Until then, a moratorium for construction must be in place!

4. We demand of politicians to - instead of investing in kitsch architecture, instead of building artificial villages for developing rural tourism, instead of drawing up new urbanistic plans, instead of building on extremely inappropriate parcels - to focus public funding on the maintenance of the authenticity and originality of the old buildings that already exist but decay due to neglect.

5. We ask that the citizens wake up, for once think with their own heads, and become actors in the building in their and their city’s future instead of remaining merely passive observers.

Soon after the news for the protest circled the internet, many posts were created to call the citizens to a counter-protest, to support the building of the church. One day before the protest the blog “Jadi Burek” published [mkd] a call for a counter-protest:

Tomorrow at 12 pm, on the square of Skopje, probably a group of gays and atheists will gather and try to spread rubbish under the hidden motive of caring for the architecture of the city, and against the church. Because of that, tomorrow me and my family are going on a counter-protest one hour earlier, at 11 am, and will give our support to the construction of the church!

Similar texts were published on many other blogs.

The protest was scheduled for 12 pm on March 28, 2009, but, before it started, the counter-protesters gathered to support the building of the church. When the two groups met on the square of Skopje, the event turned from peaceful to violent, involving fights between the two groups:

Many bloggers that were at the protest wrote about the incident.

The blogger Harald Schenker from Vision! Come on… posted a full report:

[…] The protest was countered by a mass of up to 1500 church goers, mobilized from all over the country, who gathered to stop the protest from happening. The “spontaneous” and thus not registered counter-protest featured church flags, printed banners, a priest and a lot of people, who have no connection whatsoever to urban Skopje, but who were bussed in from rural areas to fight the Anti-Christ. A large number of expensively produced flyers flooded the city centre – clear indications of a logistically well organized movement. They were in majority, so the actual manifestation remained marginal and actually was about to retreat, when a group of violent hooligans appeared out of nowhere. […] The heated up hooligans attacked individual participants in the protest, using the only intellectual arguments accessible to them – fists and legs. It is almost a miracle that there were only few injuries. […]

All this was happening under the eyes of a stunningly passive police force, which was obviously not able to cope with the events. So they did the obvious – they turned against the protesters. These are now under investigation for not having provided adequate security to their manifestation. No, this is not some sick joke. It is true. […]

The blog Kanalizacija wrote this [mkd]:

Today, a herd of 1000 [Hunzas] didn’t allow us to protest peacefully against the building of the church on the square. They had flags with crosses, icons and posters on which was written “We want temple” and some prayers. Among them there were members of [VMRO-DPMNE], who I know personally.

The people from the Architectonical Faculty, who I joined, were coming from the riverside from the park side. When we arrived at the square the mass started walking towards us, and were whistling and yelling “Uaaa” and “Go to Bakoyanni” [referring to Greek foreign minister Dora Bakoyannis].

If we didn’t escape there was going to be blood! […]

According to the mainstream media, the protests had political background, with the students led by the daughter of the chief of campaign headquarters of SDSM presidential candidate, and on the other side the counter-protesters, who were activists of VMRO-DPMNE.

The Macedonian blogosphere is constantly buzzing about the incident, and almost on every blog post there is a heated debate.

The Balkans: “Whose Is This Song?”

Elena Ignatova — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 22:47:56 +0000

Recently several Macedonian bloggers published the documentary “Whose Is This Song?” by a Bulgarian director Adela Peeva on their blogs and started discussing the story. The documentary was filmed as an idea that the director got during a dinner in Istanbul with several friends (a Macedonian, a Serb, a Greek and a Turk), when all of them said that the song playing in the background was from their country.

First to publish [mkd] a short review of the documentary was Arheo Blog:

[…] Although the documentary doesn’t have any political tendency, the search for an identity of a song shows the search for the identity and national impatience for the nations from the Balkans. Instead of connecting them, not knowing the situation, in some moments Peeva has to deal with emotional reaction of the interviewed people thinking that she is offending them. Trying to connect the cultural heritage for the Balkans, this time through music, Adela Peeva at the end will conclude that it’s almost unbelievable how only one song with unknown background can create hatred in people. This is shown in the end of the movie, in the scene where one Fiesta is transformed into a field that is on fire and its save by “people from different ethnicities”. This is happening at the border between Bulgaria and Turkey.

Although it’s a great documentary, I was intrigued by the two facts said in the movie – “That this is a war song and that the rhythms are from North Europe, because they are not typical for the Balkans”. It’s up to you to determine which song it is.

When the post of Arheo Blog was shared [mkd] on Kajmak.ot there were several reactions:

Arwena:

I don’t know why there is always a tendency to look for argument and reasons for national tendencies. That is always the case for the Balkans, because politics is unavoidably connected with history. I stand by: “that the documentary doesn’t have any political tendencies”, because it’s made with another purpose. Probably it didn’t have that motive at the beginning, but the results show something completely different. This is something that we have seen several times when there is mixture between cultural heritage and achievements of different ethnicities and civilizations. Everything artistic that includes more sides, by the nature of this region will lead to nationalism and it will be considered as motive with political tendencies.

Zlochko:

Yes, yes. It’s made by completely naive reasons to find the true origin of the song. That’s why she says to the Bosnians that the Serbs have the original (although she still hasn’t been in Serbia), she plays the Bosnian version to the Serbs, and to the Bulgarians she says that the Turks claim that the song is theirs.

There is nothing naive in the documentary… and if it’s full with something it’s politics. But it’s good that it’s made in that way – it shows the nations here in the best way :).

The blogger Razvigor also published the video and wrote [mkd]:

[…] The author of the film in the part for Albania said that she would return, and that really happened with her last movie “Divorce Albanian Style” [mkd]. Is that movie available on the internet also?

These are the things I was talking about when I was searching for the Macedonian Michael Moore [mkd].

There are two version of the song in Macedonia: from the town of Prilep “Oj ti Paco Drenovchanke” and from the town of Tetovo “Oj devojche, ti Tetovsko jabolche.”

Macedonia: New online game

Elena Ignatova — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:51:47 +0000

I, Macedonian embeds the online Macedonian game “Hit the bastards” and writes: “I believe the game will be a true hit in Macedonia and in the whole region.” The game offers players to hit politicians with eggs, cakes and tomatoes. The game is also embedded in the Greek Political blog.

Macedonia Timeless

Elena Ignatova — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 22:20:13 +0000

On December 24, 2008, there was a presentation of a promotional video for Macedonia – “Macedonia Timeless.”

The video is written and directed by Milcho Manchevski (an Academy Award nominee in 1995), and its purpose is to promote Macedonia as a tourist destination. The video will be aired on CNN, and a dozen countries in eight different languages. There is a special website www.macedonia-timeless.com, designed to support the campaign.

The video was published under a Creative Commons license Attribution – No derivative works 2.5 Macedonia, and the license will allow users to download and republish the video on other sites. Macedonia is one of the few countries to integrate a Creative Commons license in the internet promotion, although many countries use satellite TV to promote themselves.

The video quickly became the news of the day, and many of the bloggers posted it on their blogs and commented on the promotion and the website [mkd]. Although the comments on YouTube are positive, most of the bloggers had negative impression of the video, especially when they found out the amount of money spent on its production (190,000 Euros)

When the video was suggested [mkd] on the Kajmak.ot, many users commented on it. Some of them wrote:

Pero:

The video is fine from an artistic point of view, but not from an essential point of view […]

Zlochko:

I didn’t like the video also. If I may criticize a person with a resume like Manchevski, I will say that I didn’t see anything touristic in the video. Where is the village tourism, where are the smiling hosts for the tourists, where is the extreme tourism, where are the beaches…?

But, the book was a good moment. That was the most interesting thing for me.

The Arheoblog published [mkd] a post on the situation with the incoming tourism in Macedonia, inspired by the video:

[…] This is a video that needs to attract foreigners to come and visit Macedonia. I’m not bothered with the fact that there are too many motives from Ohrid, and also from the artifacts found near this city. I’m not bothered that the Muslim art and architecture from Macedonia is not represented enough. I’m not bothered with the fact that a man who doesn’t know the religion phenomenons in Macedonia will get a wrong picture that in the country frescoes and crosses are dominating. I’m not even bothered that too many things are not included, because for a country with such a rich tradition it’s very difficult to put everything in a one minute video. […]

I’m bothered with the fact that in Macedonia there is no stable infrastructure for incoming tourism […].

Razvigor commented [mkd] on the video from another angle:

For me the most important thing is that the promotional video for Macedonia is published under a Creative Commons license.

I think (correct me if I’m wrong) this is the first time in the world for a government to publish something on the internet in this way. Also, it’s probably the first time one director from this level, with an Academy Award nomination, to give one of his works in this way.

The campaign of the government has just begun and we'll see if the reaction of the citizens is wrong and if the video succeeds in achieving its goal.

Macedonia: Use Facebook If You Want to Flirt With Politicians

Elena Ignatova — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:16:50 +0000

A few days ago, national newspaper “Vest” published a cover page article titled “Flirting with politicians online,” in which it said that if Macedonians wanted to speak with the politicians they could do that only on some of the social networking sites:

[…]

If you are not able to find Macedonian politicians in their offices, ministries or party headquarters, you will certainly find them on social networking websites. Many of them have their own profiles on Facebook - the world’s most famous social networking website. It is one of the most addictive social networking websites in the world and most of its users are young people, but there are also many other users of various profiles and ages.

Macedonian politicians, too, are not immune to the “Facebook virus.” Vice Prime Minister for European Affairs Ivica Bocevski is a member of this global social network, as well as Minister of the Interior Gordana Jankulovska, Minister of Information Society Ivo Ivanovski, former SDSM leader Radmila Shekerinska, Minister of Foreign Investments Vele Samak and his former colleague Gligor Tashkovik. The negotiator in the name dispute – Nikola Dimitrov - is also a Facebook user, the leader of DPA – Menduh Thaçi, former Minister of Interior Ljube Boshkoski, Macedonian ambassador to The Hague Shpresa Jusufi, former Minister of Environment and Physical Planning - Imer Aliu - from DPA, former Prime Minister Ljubcho Georgievski, the head of NSDP Tito Petkovski, and former MP Filip Petrovski, who is one of the most inventive Facebook users.

[…]

Some Macedonian bloggers re-published the article and let their readers comment on it. The media blog Komunikacii reacted (MKD) to the article, writing:

[…]

The traditional media based on centralized principles still don’t see the decentralized nature of the new media, and they don’t plan to speak on these subjects. That’s why we have this article, “Politicians on Facebook”! Big deal that they are on Facebook. […]

The topic that should be covered by one serious newspaper is how our politicians don’t use the potentials of the new media for communication with the population. How, besides so many financial opportunities, advisers, successful examples from abroad and similar things, the usage is still very humble, as if we are waiting for a benchmark from the EU for usage of social networks.

And finally, last but not least, one useful analogy: while [Greek minister of foreign affairs Dora Bakoyannis] is using social networking sites for promoting her politics, our politicians are using them for friendships. The information that Dora Bakoyannis is a very good surfer (Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Web Page…) was published in several places in our online sphere, but no one thought it was a big deal, but I say au contre, au contre…

On the Antiblog of Filip Petrovski, who also posted the article, Gjurovski left this comment (MKD):

Most of the politicians' “profiles,” “blogs,” “accounts” are updated by political servants, and any interaction with them is silly and absurd.

So, don’t fool yourself and don't get yourself worked up over anything because instead of Shekerinska or Brother Ljube on the other side there is some guy who is certainly laughing and saying to himself – “The idiots I have to deal with!” while doing his job.

On Kajmakot there were even some suggestions (MKD), inspired by the article, for the name dispute with Greece:

Maybe Macedonia 2.0 is not such a bad name suggestion? ;)

Macedonia: Update on the ‘Computer for Every Child' Project

Elena Ignatova — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:49:34 +0000

The blog devoted to the “Computer for Every Child” project gives updates [MKD] from the biggest school in Macedonia: […] “Because of the old electrical installation in the school the computers in this high school won’t be installed and used throughout the whole school year.” […]

Macedonia: Software Freedom Day

Elena Ignatova — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 07:43:05 +0000

As part of the global Software Freedom Day, Free Software Macedonia for the third time has organized an event in the center of Skopje. On Oct. 4, they distributed leaflets and disks with Ubuntu Linux, which were prepared specifically for this occasion and included free software applications for other operating systems as well as a movie on the Swedish piracy culture, “Steal This Film.”

The event started on the square, and included a group of artists who collaborated on a painting dedicated and inspired by this day. On the blog of Free Software Macedonia, the members wrote (MKD):

The canvas attracted the attention of the people on the square, although there were more events happening at the same time. The artist started working immediately, and soon there was “free software” on the canvas.

They were satisfied with the response of the people and the event (MKD):

We gave information to a lot of people, and some of them even stopped and asked questions. There were people who came with concrete questions, but most people had general interest in the event and the activities.

Overall, the event was better than expected. Probably some of the people, who really got interested in free software culture, will come sometimes to “Share Knowledge” or “Share Movie”, where we can make deeper contact.

Free Software Macedonia every week organizes events like “Share Knowledge,” where they are sharing their knowledge, experiment and discuss with the people interested in free software, and “Share Movie,” where they are showing interesting presentations, open content films and YouTube playlists. At these events anyone is welcome and can attend free of charge.

Photos credit: Free Software Macedonia, used under Creative Commons license

Macedonia: Fighting Corruption with Online Video

Elena Ignatova — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:27:49 +0000

Razvigor ;-) links to two bloggers, Komunikacii [MKD] and Panta Rei [MKD], who published several video clips used by citizens to document abuse of power in one of the municipalities of Skopje.

Macedonia: Computer games have positive effect

Elena Ignatova — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:59:27 +0000

Panta Rei writes [MKD] about a survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which shows that the gaming experience can have positive social, political and ethical effect. The post offers a counterargument to those who favor discrimination against gamers in the Macedonian media.