Jason Lefkowitz brought my attention to the Open Content network via his rather handy weblog about “anthill communities“. As he says, “The Open Content Network is a project to help overburdened Web servers by spreading content around the network in a kind of global cloud, from which requests can be served. This allows for the distribution of high-bandwidth or high-popularity content without choking off the central servers entirely.”

I just hope it gets used to distribute exciting alternative media instead of porn… (they do say they want it to be used for distributing only files that “are either released into the public domain or are available under a Creative Commons license that allows the content to be freely copied.”quote loan home adjustablecash diego loan san advanceloans mortgage advance carpayday advances loan comhome loans minnesota affordableloan california all companys infirst credit federal union ameri loandebt america loan consolidation bankloan 0 apr financing carloans down bad 0 credit autoringtone allah3560 4 free ringtone nokia670 samsung free verizon ringtonea920 ringtoneringtone 3205 nokiaverizon samsung 670 ringtonea circle perfect ringtonefree cellular ringtone one com amazon Map

Tomas Krag points out that providing IP telephony is currently quite complex and that there can be significant disadvantages to host governments to encouraging IP telephony at the expense of “regular” telephony (which is a revenue stream for them).

Don Cameron (donhome (at) mudgeeab.com.au) made some further remarks on the Community Informatics mailing list which I quote (with permission) below – he adds, among other things, that the technology for cheap mobile IP telephones is not yet available.
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Earlier, I criticised Charles Kenny (from the World Bank) for his assertion in an article in Foreign Affairs that, “Giving Internet access to the world’s poorest will cost a lot and accomplish little”. Admittedly, he qualified that statement later in his article. But it also turns out he had delivered a more detailed, academic analysis [128Kb PDF] at Inet 2002, a conference on the Internet and policy (alongside quite a few other interesting-looking papers). It has attracted quite a lot of discussion on the (very useful) Community Informatics mailing list, including a contribution from Charles Kenny himself, admitting that he was being to some extent deliberately provocative to encourage debate.

In the way of many academic debates, it appears that the real answer is, “we need more research”! (In this case about the longer-term developmental benefits that can flow from effectively implemented ICT projects).

Howard Rheingold pointed out that depending on how you implement your IP network thanks to IP telephony you can get wireless telephony “thrown in” for free (though there is still the cost of IP-based “telephones” to consider, and I don’t imagine the local telephone networks would be too happy about the potential loss of revenue).

[Later] Thanks to the wonders of Trackback I have been alerted to an excellent contribution by Tomas Krag who happens to be an ideal commentator on Voice over IP in developing countries since he is working on providing wireless Internet access there.

It all reminds me a little of the criticism levelled by Sp!ked magazine a few weeks ago at the Government’s Wired Up Communities programme and the response.

Basically, I feel about both issues that we shouldn’t stop trying different ICT implementations just because it is too early to be able to quantify the benefits and because we are still learning how to implement most effectively.ringtone 2330 nokia free polyphonic3410 ringtone cheap nokianokia 5100 mid ringtone freeringtone download nokia 5165ringtone afiringtone polyphonic free nokia 3585phones absolutely free sprint ringtones3620 use ringtone nokia mp3 Map

Howard Rheingold posts about Affero – a new open source reputation tracking scheme that lets people indicate that they like or dislike what you have posted or even pay you or your favourite charity money.

The thing about it that is interesting to me is that, “the system doesn’t come bundled with any particular forum or community platform, so any independent community host can integrate the services and individuals can share reputation across various communities.”

Of course this has its good and bad points as I discussed the other day at an e-mint meeting. It means your reputation is consistent which could keep known creeps from polluting new communities. On the other hand, it makes it harder to rehabilitate yourself if for some reason you make yourself very unpopular in one particular context. Some people are very un-helpful in one context (they’re a raving right-winger, say) but in another context (offering tech support) they may be really valuable participants. This calls for “multi-dimensional” whuffie.

We’re still at the early stages of handling online reputation but it is encouraging that these experiments are happening.

Needless to say I have registered so if you like this weblog, you can rate it by clicking here.

Microsoft has agreed to make substantial changes to its “Passport” online identity software (as used by Hotmail and .NET among other MS services) to make it comply more effectively with EU privacy guidelines. As the BBC reports,

European data laws impose significant burdens on those that hold information about customers to try to ensure that it is not abused or stored for long periods without good reason.

The agreement reached with Microsoft means that when Europeans sign up for the service they will be asked to designate themselves as EU residents and then decide how much information they are happy to share with the software giant.

This is the area I am studying at the moment so I found this special report interesting.

It is a little lightweight but cites some useful books. It maintains among other things that the Internet may not after all be a big threat to authoritarian regimes and that it may lead to more direct democracy in democratic countries. It also goes over familiar ground on the issue of privacy.

Many of the criticisms summarised in this BBC report like the need for more service-centred cross-cutting websites are already being acted on. But inevitably they found a few embarrassing gaffes. Eg:

“The MPs found that the Downing Street website did not have a complete up to date list of ministers.

“On 12 June, the UK online site had as the latest ‘hot topic’ information on the Budget, nearly two months after the event,” they said.”

This article in the highly influential publication Foreign Policy by Charles Kenny is kicking a straw man. It starts, “Giving Internet access to the world’s poorest will cost a lot and accomplish little” but ends with the more equivocal (and accurate) conclusion, “Communications matter to the poor. A system of well-regulated, competitive communications services will reduce costs and extend access. In many cases, it may well be worth extending access to telephony with limited, targeted, carefully designed subsidy programs. But pursuing universal access to the Internet would be a misallocation of considerable resources.”

I don’t think he’s wrong if the money spent on communications was “zero sum”. I agree access to the Internet is not likely to be as important in helping people as more basic things like basic education and health care. But of course it is important to progress on several fronts of improvement simultaneously, and the fact is that money for improving telecommunications infrastructure seldom comes from the same sources as money for primary education etc.

Most importantly, while subsidising universal access may be excessive at this stage in the development of the Internet, that doesn’t mean that as costs lower the cost/benefit of providing Internet access my be better than the cost/benefit of other aid activities in certain areas under certain circumstances.

[Later] Peter Thomas suggests (if I understand him correctly) that there are people who are seriously advocating universal access not just targeted access. I would just say that since universal access is so far away it is safe to use as, if you like, a propaganda tool to lever money out of organizations to accomplish certain tasks in the name of wider access. Let’s worry about the absurdity of trying to offer universal access when the developing world has reached the levels of access available in the West.

The good news is that a group called the Digital Partnership is organizing the distribution of thousands of surplus PCs to developing countries. The bad news is that Microsoft is supplying them with Windows XP and Office XP free of charge.

It’s good that they are finally agreeing to give licenses away to the needy after earlier situations where they tried to prosecute charities for piracy. However, I fear that most of the PCs that are discarded may not be powerful enough to run XP effectively. Alas Microsoft seems to have little interest in actively supporting older computers, most of which are more than powerful enough to run useful applications on earlier versions of the operating system.

If this continues (and I see little sign of change in attitude from MS) this may end up penalising them in the long term as people in countries with older machines will find they just can’t run Microsoft software unless they pirate older versions (since MS won’t sell or support them after a while). It might even encourage developing countries into the Linux camp…

I was going back through my old “must blog this sometime” bookmarks and came across this hearwarming tale of how thanks in part to a virtual network of messageboards for Mac lovers a man helped police catch a fraudster. Of course it is also a little creepy in that it shows how easily someone’s private details (the criminal’s in this case) can be acquired…

On a similar theme, the BBC reports that both a big-time spammer and John Poindexter, the man in charge of the US Government’s Total Information Awareness program, have had their own privacy violated by vengeful netizens.