I will take back every bad thing I’ve ever said about ringtones. Yes, they are a waste of money. Yes, they are silly status symbols. Yes, they serve no useful function other than to annoy your neighbor. But I have to say it makes my day to hear Sarah Vaughn and realize that my phone…
Windows on a Mac: Get Ready for More Switchers
I just finished watching the webcast of Steve Jobs at the Macworld expo in San Francisco, where he unveiled today the newest innovations coming out of Apple. I’m a huge Mac addict — I’m typing now on my third iBook. And Job’s announcement that the newest “Macbooks” and iMacs will come with Intel dual core…
The Times UK quoted me!
I was googling around the net and found out that the October 20 post (“Senator Coleman draws a line in the sand on internet governance”) from this blog was quoted in the Times UK newspaper. The November 12, 2005 story was on “Censorship is at the heart of debate on internet control” where I am…
Dear UN: Please get an RSS feed
The United Nations website is filled with a wealth of useful information and news about the world we live in, from on-the-ground updates on conflicts and security crises to statistical data on every country on the planet. And yet it tends to hoard that information to be mostly consumed by a small population of diplomats…
I am the ruler of Panganibania
I recently surfed across NationStates.net, a huge online community of people role-playing as nation-states. The site was created by author Max Berry to complement his novel Jennifer Government. The idea of thousands of people engaging in virtual statecraft in real-time online is so strange and cool. To play the international politics simulation, you first have…
UN fan proposes to girlfriend on General Assembly podium
In contrast to the typical litany of wars, famines and human rights violations, the UN News service sent out a bit of soft news at the end of the year, reporting that a UN fan proposed to girlfriend in General Assembly. It’s a very cute story about Alan Daly, an American, proposing to his German…
Happy new year! Happy old archives!
I finished the laborious task of porting over my old blog from last year, which are now safely ensconced in the archives of this site. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out how to enable or create a search function, so you’ll have to go by date or category to find something you’re interested in. Bummer.
Old blog still available
While I am transitioning over to this new system and backing up my old posts, you can find my old posts still at rikomatic.python-hosting.com/blogomatic. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to port my old blog posts over to this new system on Typepad, so I’ll have to do it manually. Sigh.
Welcome to Rikomatic.com
Hi folks, welcome to my new blog, “The Click Heard Round the World.” I’m porting over my old blog that was developed using the Plone-based Quills blog software. The company that developed Quills went under a couple of months ago, so it seemed like a good time to move on. This blog focuses on international…
Civil Society is Dead, Long Live Civil Society
Robert Guerra of CPSR asked on the WSIS plenary email list whether or not the plenary list should continue to exist or not. I will re-state what I said at the close CS plenary in Tunis. All the structures and modalities that were developed over the course of the last four years in the WSIS…