Culture and Society

At the Geneva UN digital summit, Iranian president Mohammad Khatami claimed that only 240 sites are banned: He said the ban only applies to sites that are incompatible with Islam, and a government official added that “all political sites are free”. Online censorship in Iran became a big issue at …

We mentioned the groovy counterintuitive download technique known as BitTorrent back in May: BitTorrent is a “swarming” file download system. After you download the file, your computer automatically hosts it for other people to download, instead of everyone downloading from the same congested server. The more people there are downloading …

Check out this coolness: a listing of presidential candidate sites and the features each offer on them: Presidential campaign is in full swing on the Web. Most campaigns are building a multi-site Web presence by sponsoring different kinds of sites. Click stars in the Campaign Web Sites section of the …

Coca Cola is entering the digital music biz in Britain. While everyone and their mother is getting into the game, this is actually pretty interesting because with Coke’s marketing budget and name recognition they could bring a lot of consumers into the market. It could also be a step toward …

I feel very badly for this woman, her daughter and family, randomly caught in the latest round of file sharing lawsuits by the RIAA. But we have heard this story before, and by now ignorance of the campaign is a little hard to buy. So I am not arguing this …

In the accustomed UN manner, talks are moved forward by everyone agreeing to do nothing about anything: Rich and poor countries have settled most of the key disputes that had threatened to derail this week’s United Nations digital divide summit. After two days of talks in Geneva, negotiators reached deals …

Dan Gillmor has a report on amazing technology in Hong Kong that allows TV over broadband, real broadband, not the poky nonsense we have here in the U.S., but the system is also autocratic. Is this our future as well? If the future of television is taking shape here, our …

This sounds like an excellent showcase for non-traditional “media art,” and a great excuse to actually create that “thing” that’s been sitting in the back of your brain: How Can YOU Resist?: LA Freewaves 9th Celebration of Experimental Media Arts Accepting applications beginning January 1, 2004. Postmark Deadline: February 15, …

Thanks to Jim Vickers of Cleveland Magazine for including us in a fine article called “Hot Blogs,” which examines the concept of blogging and several Cleveland area blogs, including Dawn’s: www.dawnolsen.com Blogger: Dawn Olsen Content: The wife of wp.blogcritics.org founder Eric Olsen, Dawn has been writing her “Up Yours … …

New song and music video from Willie Nelson called “Jimmy’s Road.” With just Willie singing and backing himself on guitar, the song is a spare folkish story of “Jimmy” from childhood to soldier to casualty. I guess it works okay as a song – I am predisposed to like Willie’s …