My lil post today about “Mac’in on the R Train” made it onto the Gothamist blog (one of my favs). Thanks, Jen! It set off a debate about whether or not its safe to use your laptop on the subway. Of the 24 comments, 16 thought it was a bad idea with only 4 indicating…
Category: Information Society
Mac’in on the R Train?
I snapped a picture of this woman using her 17" Powerbook on the subway this morning! The R train uptown, from City Hall to 28th Street, about 9am, in case you are interested. I guess that’s another sign that New York is becoming safer. I’ve blogged previously about electronics and personal safety in public spaces….
AOL hates my e-mail too
Free Press, the LA Times and others are reporting that AOL has been systematically blocking email that contain references to the dearAOL.com campaign, aimed at getting AOL to drop their pay-to-send email filtering system. AOL has been working on instituting a new email filtering system that would only allow unsolicited emails from senders who pay…
New York gov website ranks 1st for usability, 13th for citizens participation
A joint study by researchers at Rutgers-Newark and Sungkyunkwan University, Korea, of the official websites of the world’s major cities ranked Seoul, New York, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Sydney as the top five municipalities in “digital governance.” They define "Digital governance" as "the degree to which a website – in this instance those of 100…
“Book Signing” on April 12 at National Model UN Convention
My friend Walter Hoffmann has convinced me to do a "book signing" for the little study I did called e-Democracy and the United Nations (2004) for his group the Center for UN Reform Education . The event will be on April 12 at the National Model United Nations convention, which is taking place at the…
UNSG Approves the Global Alliance for ICT & Development
Sarbuland Khan, of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs at the UN, announced today in an e-mail that the UN Secretary General has formally approved the creation of the Global Alliance for ICT and Development. I have blogged in the past about the Global Alliance as an interesting idea that was still ill-defined. It…
A Planetary Early Warning System?
The United Nations recently concluded an international conference on early warning in Bonn, Germany. Over 1,200 participants from 140 countries participated in the gathering, that concluded that a "people-centered" approach was needed to build effective early-warning systems to prevent the loss of human life from natural disasters such as floods, tsunamis and pandemics. As a…
Democracy Player: Roll Your Own TV Channel
I have been playing around with the Democracy Player, a nice little program that aggregates various online videos into “channels” that you can easily surf through, view and subscribe to. They bill themselves as “a new kind of browser for watching videos– grab webpages with video and video RSS feeds (including podcasts, video blogs, and…
Green.tv: the first broadband TV channel on the environment
Today was the launch of Green.tv, the first "broadband TV channel" on environmental issues. Sponsored by the UN Environment Programme and a host of other sponsors, the site will carry films from around the world produced by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community filmmakers, public sector bodies and companies with a firm interest in protecting the environment….
Freedom to Connect Conf in DC April 3-4
Just found out about the "Freedom to Connect" or F2C conference happening from April 3-4 in DC. Sounds like it will be an important gathering of policy-makers, experts and activists on internet public policy. The goal of F2C:Freedom to Connect is to bring a wide range of thought leaders to Washington, DC to share experience,…