Archive for
July 21st, 2005


Stories

Egyptian Bloggers on the Radio 

a small portrait of this author Rebecca MacKinnon · 15:30

Congratulations to Big Pharaoh and Mohammed of From Cairo With Love for their appearance on NPR today (audio is also archived on the site). NPR correspondent Eric Weiner (who I knew in Tokyo) did a nice job mixing the sound of these two bloggers reading some of their posts, I thought.

We link to both of these guys a lot. I hope they'll keep on posting… Mohammed sounds like he's got a bit of blog burnout, judging from his latest post, which is understandable. It's hard to find the right balance between blogging about life and events - and actually being engaged in them. We don't want to put pressure on him or anything, but hope he'll find the inspiration to keep talking to us, and sharing with us how the world looks through the eyes of an Egyptian blogger. We are interested and we do care.

3 comments · »»

Bombings, what bombings? 

This author has no photo Luke Razzell · 14:39

London gasped in horrified anticipation, then shrugged collectively as four more bombing attempts fizzled out harmlessly today.

Bignoseduglyguy at London Metblogs responded quickly to the breaking news. Wikipedia has an amazingly comprehensive page already up—hat's off. And there's a detailed, blow by blow account with quotes from the mainstream media's responses to the events at perfect.co.uk.

And Pinkfairycat, also at London Metblogs, panicked for ten minutes, then decided to make dinner and have a bath. Those of us who lived through the IRA attacks on London at the end of the last century feel right at home, in the most unfortunate way.

1 comment · »»

China: Real name registration for instant messenger 

a small portrait of this author Frank Dai · 08:50

Real name registration has been hot topic for Chinese bloggers since most of BBS owned by major colleges were closed down or restricted access by government in March. People generally thought it was bloggers who should register themselves first if regualtions requiring every internet user’s real identity take effects. But such guesses prove to be wrong now.

Yesterday according to an announcement from QQ.com, largest Instant Messenger services provider with its primary product named QQ, it will required the administrator and creator of QQ group, a multi-users chat device based on the IM software, to give in their real personal information. Such rules were under the request from ShenZhen Administration of Public Security. Here is the authorizing document. The QQ group is more like a mini BBS and only users with a membership in that group can type their message to other users of the group.

Chinese Bloggers are reacting quickly to the event. WangYi, an IT journalist said the total amount of groups is too much to collect and calculate one by one and the workload must be unimaginable. He himself had 8 QQ accounts and he set up 4 groups for each account, so it would be a real headache for him to register them all.

DingYong has raised the legal question of such rules. He pointed out that although the QQ Company was located in ShenZhen but its user came from all over the country and requiring their information like ID card seems beyond the jurisdiction of ShenZhen government. It should be noted that the two above-mentioned bloggers are using their real name willingly.

The ultimate outcome of such rules is still unclear but we can foresee a more rigid control over internet implemented by Chinese government coming up. We will keep an eye on the event.

6 comments · »»

Pick of the Day from Argentina This is a Photos post

a small portrait of this author David Sasaki · 02:41

Buenos Aires

“Yellow and black taxis” by Larscapes.

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