- In Egypt’s ongoing revolutionary travails, FP’s Nathan Brown argues that the Egyptian revolutionaries have made a number of important, and largely ignored, victories, while the armed forces add blogger arrest to their list of Mubarak-era hijinks, and Sandmonkey rolls up his sleeves to suggest an election blueprint.
- In the world of “Open”, critics find that Google Android’s “Open” rhetoric is just a bunch of rhetoric, Kiwanja consideres problematic issues in using open source software in ICT4D, an open source programmer has written a scraper for tracking changes in US legislation, new research finds that open access legal research is 50% more likely to be cited than comparable articles in journals with academic paywalls, and Huffington post announces a paywall for New York Times employees.
- In the world of tech security and privacy,t the Chinese politburo has ramped up its electronic surveillance efforts with automated voice recognition censorship software that disconnects phone calls with the word “protest”, Tech President profiles the Guardian Project on mobile security, and a new expose shows that Google’s Schmidt tried to remove search results to protect his own privacy.
- Following up on the explanation Olympics á la show throwers indices, Paul Staniland’s (pre-Arab spring) research looks at links between urban network mobilization and state response, Chris Blattman suggests that poverty leads to violence, Marc Michaels suggests minimum wage is a cure for Egyptian corruption, and the Communications of the Association for Information Systems has published an exploratory study suggesting a positive relationship between country level governance and ICT access.
- Political Facebooking continues to be a lightning rod for controversy, but the company should in any case thank the revolution for national market increase and the priceless PR of baby names.
- From the desk of miscellania, the African Court for Human and Peoples’ Rights issued its first ruling against a State , ordering Lybia to cease endangering civilians, Donal Trump bragged about “screwing Gaddafi“, the US State Department started Tweeting in Arabic and planning to get power from prison labour, and Diego Stocco plays music on a tree.