Freedom

Wikipedia says no to censoring

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

wikipedia logoWikipedia, that great resource for all sorts of information, is refusing to censor itself to gain an audience in China. The site was censored by China in October of last year because it has bad things to say about the country according to the Chinese leadership.

The founder of Wikipedia has “challenged other internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do more good than harm by co-operating with Beijing.”

“We’re really unclear why we would be [banned],’ Wales told The Observer. ‘We have internal rules about neutrality and deleting personal attacks and things like this. We’re far from being a haven for dissidents or a protest site. So our view is that the block is in error and should be removed, but we shall see.'”

Help Darfur

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

blue hat dudeDarfur is a region in trouble. For years there have been killings and other tragedies. Obviously this is not good news at all – in fact it’s the opposite of good news. Today’s good news about Darfur comes from people wanting to help the region through action. Show your support online by wearing a blue hat!

The Global Day for Darfurwas originally conceived by a group of NGOs who were concerned about the international communityÂ’s slow response to the crisis in Darfur. ItÂ’s truly global: the day will see peaceful demonstrations, rallies, marches, exhibitions and concerts in cities around
the world including Abuja, Addis Ababa, Berlin, Cairo, Hong Kong, Khartoum,
Kigali, London, Melbourne, Moscow, Nairobi, New York, Toronto, Paris and
Vancouver.

Blogging in Beirut

- Vanessa King 1 Comment

People on blog sites such as livejournal are telling their personal stories about living with war and many are even engaging in civil and informative conversations with people on opposite sides of the conflict. In a recent article in Wired News there is a story of a young woman living in the center of Beirut whos has been doing just that.

“We have opportunities of directly talking to the person on the other side and figuring out what they want,” she said. “I get a lot of questions like: ‘Why didn’t your government kick out Hezbollah? Why didn’t your army stop them?’ Now people get a chance to find out.”

Through discussions and journal entries bloggers are reaching a new level of communication that would have been impossible throughout history during armed conflicts. It is allowing citizens to converse and relate to one another. This is an awesome story of people working to reach each other and tell personal accounts of what life is like when living in the heart of a war zone.
“A five-minute walk and I’ll be right in the middle of it,” she said. “I can hear everything very loudly — the building shakes. I can see the smoke, and so I know where they’re hitting exactly.”

India Continues to Blog

- Adam Clare

The Indian Government recently tried to stiffle free speech of many of its citizens by blocking their access to certain blogs and blogging sites. This was in reaction to the recent terror attack in Mumbai, the blogosphere and many people around the world felt that India reacted too strongly.

India has announced that they wanted to selectively censor some pages and that “Because of a technological error, the Internet providers went beyond what was expected of them which in turn resulted in the unfortunate blocking of all blogs.”

Well, today, the Indian Government has said that itwon’t ban bloggers. Free speech online can continue in India!

Google Does Good

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Some recent news about that massive search engine Google. The company has announced that it has joined a US lobbying group, the ODF Alliance, that supports the Open Document file format. Open Document is a Free (as in free speech) document format, an alternative to the standard Microsoftâ„¢ .doc format. It is nice because it allows for a more accessible document than propriety software formats.

Having Google throw it’s weight behind supporting ODF will hopefully have a positive impact on the adoption of the open file format. ODF is also supported by Sun Microsystems, IBM and Novell, among others.

Google has also decided that they want to try to save the world with their vast wealth through their charitable organization Google.org. Wired has a nice interview with the man who is in charge of this billion dollar initiative from Google.

Google makes Adsense, which we use here at ThingsAreGood.

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