By Shabina Khatri

On Wednesday, Qatar added an eighth digit to all mobile and landline phone numbers in the country. Officials said the move is an effort to create more phone numbers in a country that has seen its population double in the last five years.

Hukoomi, Qatar's government website, explains the change:

Under the plan, the first digit of both the fixed and mobile numbers will be repeated.

Thus, if your old number started with 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 all you need to do is to repeat the first digit such as 33, 44, 55, 66 and 77…

All emergency telephone numbers within Qatar, including 999 and 112, will not be affected by the change, and the country code will remain +974.

Numbers beginning with 1, 2, 8 and 9 will not be changed.

Though residents were initially worried that the change would cause widespread confusion, the transition seems to have been made with little incident.

That's thanks in part to several renumbering applications for mobile phones that automatically update users' contact lists.

The apps, however, didn't appear to work for everyone.

On Twitter, @NazQatar said:

Thanks to screw my phonebook with those apps!! it DOESN'T recognize all numbers start with 00974 #Qatar

@omerm27 said:

its getting kind of annoying already. it's only been two hours

Others were more accepting (and tongue-in-cheek) about the new number scheme.

On Facebook, Fahad Qureshi said:

because too many people are moving to this country, they ran out of phone numbers lol….so now the first digit of every number is repeated….if you ever plan on calling me in the future lol…update your phone books.

On Twitter, mohamed said:

The upside of the telco's in Qatar changing the number format is that I will have to speak to fewer people today. #antisocial

And though the change seems to have gone over peacefully, some continue to worry about the inconvenience having a new number would cause.

On the popular social forum Qatar Living, ajmani said:

All business cards, stationeries, resume's, job sites, other sites, etc etc needs to be updated… i doubt if everyone has fixed it already! Hope there will be a recorded message whenever someone calls on the old number, guiding them to add 3, or 4 or 5 or 6…!

Indeed, for the next three months, those dialing seven-digit numbers will hear an automated message advising them of the new scheme.

Whether that gives people away for the summer and Ramadan enough time to acclimate to the renumbering plan remains to be seen.

By Rodrigo Penalba · Translated by Silvia Viñas · View original post [es]

Flyer for Event 2.0 Meeting of Blogs and New Media

Experts in digital communities will come together for the 2.0 Meeting of Blogs and New Media (in Spanish, ”2.0 Encuentro de Blogs & Nuevos Medios”) which will take place on August 12 and 13 at the Central American University (UCA) in Managua, Nicaragua. The activity is a practical assessment of web tendencies and the power these alternative ways of communication have to influence public and private spheres.

The gathering [es] will include the participation of experts from Central America, Colombia and Venezuela, who will give lectures, workshops and more. The main subjects will be: New Media and Cultural Diversity and Development; Citizen Participation and Advocacy; Content Production for New Media; New Scenarios: mobile applications, new uses and methods, perspectives on the future.

“It is a culturally enriching experience, but it also involves a proposal to emphasize that web activity is not only a novelty, but also a learning method that generates real debate that may influence public opinion,” comments David Ruíz López-Prisuelos, Coordinator at Spain Cultural Center in Nicaragua (Centro Cultural de España en Nicaragua, CCEN).

To help visualize the lectures, the event will begin with a panel discussion about the use of these tools. The panel includes La Carpio Online Project (”Proyecto La Carpio en Línea”) [es]” from Costa Rica, Everything for the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua (”Todo por la Costa Caribe de Nicaragua”) [es] from Facebook and Another World is possible (”Otro mundo es posible”) [es]: Organization and action of Nicaraguan social movements on the web. An interesting element will be the use of an open microphone for bloggers to share their experiences.

“It is an activity to discuss the current state of mass media and the tendencies toward other formats that range from micro-blogging to podcasting, and how the media is adapting to various uses and needs that range from basic social organizing to its use in large companies,” says Rodrigo Peñalba [es], an author for Global Voices, a specialist in cultural production in new media and CCEN's special guest to help organize the event.

During the second day, journalist Cristian Cambronero [es] from Costa Rica, Global Voices author Renata Ávila from Guatemala and Yuliana Isabel Paniagua [es] from Global Voices' project “Hiperbarrio” in Colombia will present on experiences in citizen participation on the web. There will also be a teleconference from the BBC in London, workshops on content creation and a conversation with Nicaraguan bloggers Emila Persola [es], Freddy Quezada [es], Space for Alternative Communication and Sexual Diversity (Espacio de Comunicación Alternativa por la Diversidad Sexual [es]), and Fabio Buitrago [es], who will talk about video-blogging as a channel for environmental education and action.

The lecture series will conclude with a presentation about new tendencies on the increasingly common use of blogs and new media by business corporations,  and with case studies on the management of social networks in the world of advertising. The event will be open to the public until full capacity is reached, giving priority to those who register on the official blog where news and updates will be posted.  For more information visit El encuentro de blogs [es], and also the program [es] and list of Confirmed Presenters [es].

By Mong Palatino

The OneVietnam.org social network was launched this month to connect Vietnamese expats and young migrants to the culture and history of Vietnam.

By Alexey Sidorenko

YouTube under fire in the Russia's Far East. Photo by mauritsonline

On July 16, 2010, Komsomolsk-on-Amur city court issued a decision [RUS] requested by the city prosecutor, obliging a local Internet provider “Rosnet” to block IP-addresses of five websites: lib.rus (the judge meant lib.rus.ec, a Russian Internet library), thelib.ru, www.zhurnal.ru, web.archive.org, and… youtube.com. The websites were accused of hosting extremist content (several online copies of “Mein Kampf” and a video “Russia for Russians” that accompanied a skinhead-related song uploaded by a user from Serbia [RUS]), while the provider was accused of “not blocking them.” The court decision says:

…проведенная прокуратурой проверка показала, что интернет-провайдер в лице ответчика не обеспечивает должным образом безопасность пользователей в глобальной сети. Жители г. Комсомольска-на-Амуре имеют свободный доступ к сайтам экстремисткой и террористической направленности, которые пропагандируют идеи общественных организаций, содержат высказывания, направленные на возбуждение ненависти и вражды к группе лиц по признакам национальности, отношения к религии, а равно принадлежности к власти, органам управления, а также оправдание террористической деятельности, запрещенных на территории Российской Федерации.
[…]
в целях восстановления нарушенных прав граждан и во исполнение действующего законодательства, доступ к … к Интернет - сайтам … следует ограничить, посредством добавления на пограничном маршрутизаторе правил фильтрации IP - адресов указанных сайтов.

…the inspection conducted by the Prosecutor's Office showed that the Internet provider (the defendant) failed to ensure the security of the users of the global network properly. Komsomolsk-on-Amur residents have free access to extremist and terrorist websites that promote ideas of public organizations, contain statements aimed at inciting hatred and hostility towards a group of people based on ethnicity, attitude towards religion, as well as belonging to the authorities, and justification of the terrorist activities prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation.
[…]
in order to restore the violated rights of the citizens and to enforce the current law, access… to the Internet sites … should be limited by adding rules of the IP-filtration of the aforementioned websites to the router.

Marker.ru published [RUS] an interview with prosecutor Vladimir Pakhomov, who said that “a provider is obliged to filter information that goes through its channels to the World Wide Web,” and didn't exclude the possibility of filtering Vkontakte.ru and other social networks.

The court's decision, however, hasn't been enforced yet. The provider managed to appeal [RUS] on time and is waiting for the decision of a higher instance court.

Numerous mistakes (both spelling and factual) in the court decision attracted attention [RUS] of various bloggers, highlighting a low level of computer (and general) literacy of a person who wrote the decision. Besides, the measure of IP-filtering is both expensive and inefficient (for various reasons), argued Rosnet in a detailed press release published on its website. Russian Google said [RUS] the decision might be a serious threat for the development of the Internet in Russia's Far East.

Previously, GV reported on other cases of similar accusations against providers (here, here, and here/a>, and many others that were not documented). Until now, however, prosecutors have been demanding to close only small websites. With YouTube, the technique of content removal/blocking was slightly different. The Russian authorities addressed YouTube directly with demands to delete certain videos, and the service usually complied [RUS].

“Rosnet” cited [RUS] two similar cases that were initiated but lost by the same Prosecutor's Office in April and May 2010. Recently, Sova-center reported on a court decision in Chita region, also in the Far East Region: Chita city court obliged a local provider to block the website of “Russian Zabaikalie” because of the neo-Nazi content. Both Chita and Komsomolsk-on-Amur are within 200-300 kilometers from the border with China, a country with the most severe Internet filtering systems. Besides, Komsomolsk-on-Amur has some of the highest Internet prices [EN] and some of the lowest numbers of social network users among cities with the population of more than 200,000 people.

So what is it? Is it geographical proximity that makes blocking practices so tempting, or a technical backwardness? Or, a general trend towards a nation-wide system of content blocking? Stupidity of the local authorities or the beginning of the Great Russian Firewall?

Both, concludes Anton Nossik, IT entrepreneur and a popular blogger. In his column at snob.ru, where Nossik analyzed [RUS] the unusual expansion of the list of extremist materials [RUS] (which grew from 218 items in 2008 to almost 700 now), he quite cynically writes about such prosecution of “extremism”:

грандиозный замысел опустился на уровень исполнителей, у которых в общем случае никакой собственной мотивации насчет идеологического контроля не было. И система принялась отрабатывать начальственный указ… У милиции и прокуратуры появился «план по валу», предусматривающий выявление и запрет экстремистских материалов на подконтрольной территории, физической и виртуальной. …подобрались «эксперты», готовые штамповать по заказу прокуратуры заключения об экстремистском характере любого поступившего от заказчика материала. Устаканилась процедура вынесения судебных решений. Идею требовать от уездных провайдеров фильтрации запретных серверов по IP обкатало УФСБ по Новосибирской области четыре года назад […].

[…]

В результате этой суеты по всей стране оформился внушительный и нелепый конвейер, продуктами работы которого являются и сам Федеральный список запретных материалов, и недавнее постановление о запрете YouTube в Комсомольске-на-Амуре, которое на нем основано. В работе конвейера задействованы тысячи милицейских, прокурорских и судейских работников по всей стране. Которые в гробу видали и свободу слова, и борьбу с ней, но у них у всех есть разнарядка, и нужно ежеквартально отчитываться о проделанной работе. На выходе имеем то, что имеем: нагромождение нелепых и неэффективных запретов, с нулевым практическим выходом — будь то для реальной борьбы с экстремизмом или даже для локального ограничения доступа к цензурируемым произведениям. Весь этот мартышкин труд осуществляется строго для галочки, для отчетности. А главный стимул, которым объясняется высокий уровень активности уездных бюрократов по этому направлению, — чрезвычайная простота всех процедур, позволяющих затем рапортовать об успешно проделанной работе, в условиях нулевого контроля сверху за ее полезностью или эффективностью.

The master plan made it down to the level of executives, who actually didn't have any motivation for ideological control. So the system started working on the order from the bosses… The police and the prosecutor's office got an [overall plan] that foresaw the exposure of extremist materials on the territory they control, virtual or real. … “experts” appeared, who were ready to replicate assessments recognizing as extremist any material they received from their [superiors]. The practice of issuing court decisions also became routine. Novosibirsk region's Federal Security Service was the first one to try out the idea of demanding IP-filtration of banned servers from local providers four years ago […].

[…]

As a result of all this mess, the country got a significant and absurd production line. The federal list of extremist materials, as well as the recent decision to ban YouTube in Komsomolsk-on-Amur are its products. Thousands of police officers, prosecutors and court employees are involved in the work of this production line all over the country. All these people couldn't care less about freedom of speech or about suppressing it, but they all have a plan, and [every three months] they have to report about the completed work. And we have what we have: a pile of absurd and inefficint bans with zero practical result - be it in the fight against extremism or even local limiting of access to the censored works. All this futile activity is being carried out only for appearance's sake, for paperwork. And the main stimulus for the local bureaucrats that could explain the high level of activity in this direction is the extraordinary simplicity of all these procedures, the ease of reporting a successfully-fulfilled job, and no control whatsoever of its usefulness and efficiency from the above.

Nossik concluded that Russia's police “are able to bury any disgusting totalitarian idea,” be it censorship or total surveillance. Although the reality described by Nossik is somewhat true, the case of the first YouTube ban in Russia is the result of a steady and consistent development. Blog or video platforms (like YouTube) are becoming more dangerous for individual bloggers, since the attempts to ban LiveJournal or Facebook after they hosted questionable material are becoming increasingly probable.

By Janine Mendes-Franco

“The unemployment phenomenon, which is vehemently denied by high officials in the government, is nothing new”: Iváns File Cabinet uses the example of Cuba's only telecommunications company to illustrate its effects.

By Janine Mendes-Franco

“The unemployment phenomenon, which is vehemently denied by high officials in the government, is nothing new”: Iváns File Cabinet uses the example of Cuba's only telecommunications company to illustrate its effects.

By Ndesanjo Macha

Erik looks at mobile payment services in Kenya: “Kenya is quickly gaining a competitive advantage in the mobile payments space. Led by mobile operator giant Safaricom with their Mpesa product, the market locally sees huge value in mobile money transactions.”

By Alexey Sidorenko

Habrahabr users discuss [RUS] the latest Akamai's “State of the Internet” report. According to the research, 12 percent of all the Internet-attacks in the first quarter of 2010 were carried out from the territory of Russia, while the U.S. hackers took the “second prize” for 10 percent of the world's aggressive Internet-traffic.

By Alexey Sidorenko

Marker.ru publishes an interview with Vladimir Pakhomov, city prosecutor that obliged the local Internet provider to block Youtube, Web.archive.org and other websites [EN]. Pakhomov expressed Chinese-government-style philosophy on Internet-filtering: “Provider is obliged to filter the information that goes through its channels to the Worldwide Web”, and didn't exclude probable filtering of Vkontakte and other social networks.

By Portnoy Zheng

Tetralet complains about his recent experience with Microsoft [zht] about how the software giant emailed and called to threaten that if Tetralet does not welcome Microsoft to “help his company on software property management“, Microsoft would report to superiors and “what's going to happen is not predicable“.

By Janine Mendes-Franco

“The Commonwealth of Dominica has gone virtual with great alacrity” in order to promote tourism; Repeating Islands has the details.

By Mong Palatino

EngageMedia uploads a short video clip featuring Community Technology Center in Indonesia, an access point to receive and spread out migrant issues through the internet.

By Marta Cooper

This past month has been an interesting one in the cat-and-mouse game between Chinese Internet censorship and its non-conformists. Microblogs in the People's Republic had begun to feel the weight of a heavier government crackdown, following the publication of a report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) claiming social networking websites are used as tools of “political subversion”. The Internet Blue Paper, published by CASS in early July, claimed microblogging and social networking platforms, such as Facebook, helped spur on the ethnic riots in Xinjiang in 2009, in which 200 people were killed and 1,500 injured. It said:

Facebook has appeared as the rallying point for overseas Xinjiang separatist groups … these social networking sites have become a tool of political subversion used by Western nations, including the United States.

(…)

Faced with the popularity of social networking sites … it is imperative to exert control … [and] pay a lot of attention to these potential risks and latent dangers.

Following the riots, both Facebook and microblogging platform Twitter were blocked in the People's Republic, where they remain unaccessible without the use of proxy servers or virtual private networks (VPNs). A domestic microblog, Fanfou, was also shut down last year prior to the twentieth anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. However, other homegrown versions, namely those of portals Sina, Sohu and Neatease, remain incredibly popular. Sina Weibo alone has over 5 million users and, AFP has reported, government figures have shown that around 176 million Chinese Internet users were using social networking sites at the close of 2009, with most between 20 and 29 years of age.

Yet, these versions too have felt the wrath of the net nanny. After a brief period of being inaccessible (which, according to a Sohu customer services representative speaking to the WSJ, was due to maintenance rather than government censorship), sites such as Sina Weibo, Neatease and Tencent bore a ‘beta' icon next to their logos. This would suggest testing of some kind, offering users a prototype version. Bnext summarized the situation

各家網站異口同聲地表示，與政府命令無關，只是單純網站維護；新浪網行銷中心副總劉奇表示，從去年八月微博上線，其實一直都是試用階段，目前正在策劃上線一週年紀念日再度啟用儀式。儘管如此，數家網站同時出現「beta」版本還是讓網友擔憂，部分網友更在網路上發表，顯示維護的真正原因是中國政府勒令清除敏感內容，並稱為「713殺博事件」。

All portal websites claimed that it has nothing to do with the government, just a matter of regular maintenance. The deputy director of Sina market department said that Sina micro-blog has been in the beta period since August and they are planning to relaunch the website in their first anniversary. However, the fact that a number of portal websites turned themselves into “beta” version is worrisome. Some netizens said that the reason behind maintenance is government censorship order to clear sensitive content. They even call the incident “713 murdering of micro blog”.

The team at ChinaGeeks also tested the theory that the URL shortener on Sina Weibo only works for domestic websites:

As you can see from our Sina Weibo, we attempted to post five links. The first four were to innocuous and unblocked websites outside China, including a New York Times article and the Geico Insurance Company website. All four were converted into shortened links automatically, and when clicked, they returned only an error message. However, when we tested a fifth time using a domestic link (youku.com), the shortened URL worked fine and we were directed to the Youku.

So anything — anything — that isn’t on a Chinese website can no longer be linked via Sina Weibo. I’m not even going to comment on this one. Will it push more Chinese internet users outside the GFW in search of a microblogging experience that doesn’t pretend half of the internet doesn’t exist? Who knows.

The bridge blog also translated a post by lawyer and blogger, Liu Xiaoyuan, detailing his own battles with Chinese censorship techniques. It was promptly deleted by Sohu, though remains unblocked by Sina (incidentally, upon seeing the ‘beta' logo, Sina microbloggers had written open pleas to the site to not remove posts):

In March of 2007, Sohu started to block and hide some of my blog posts. I got fed up with it and on August 16, 2007, filed a lawsuit with the Haidian district People’s Court. After nearly a year and two trials, both of my suits2 were rejected. If even the People’s Court sees but does not care about the violation of a citizen’s right to free speech, what could I do?

(…)

On July 28, 2009, I had been writing on my Sohu blog for more than three years. That day was the first time my blog was forcibly closed. They didn’t tell me anything [about why the blog was suddenly closed]. So fine, if you won’t tell me anything, then I will tell you something! I immediately registered another Sohu blog and gave Sohu a piece of my mind.

I never thought that this blog would be killed on July 12, 2010, before it had even reached one year of age. On the 13th, I opened another Sohu blog, but it only lived for a single day and was “assassinated” on the 14th.

I’ve said before, the best way to protest when they close your blog is to open another. [I've opened another blog,] I really don’t know how long this one will survive.

The glitch, however, seems to have been temporary. We tested ChinaGeeks' Sina Weibo links this morning, all of which were working within the confines of the Great Firewall. Furthermore, it would seem as though the notorious Green Dam filtering software is reaching its demise. A project office set up to promote the software, which the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), deemed manufacturers ship PCs with, has been shut down due to a lack of financial support. With intense backlash from the blogosphere, including the vehement declaration by the Anonymous Netizens in June 2009, plans for mandatory installation were withdrawn.

Prior to this month's events, the government released its first White Paper on the Internet in China, which stated that “Chinese citizens fully enjoy freedom of speech on the Internet.” That is, so long as they do not “infringe upon state, social, and collective interests or the legitimate freedom and rights and other citizens.”

By Alexey Sidorenko

LiveJournal, Russia's still most popular blog platform, recently fell under severe criticism for several “innovations”: purging suspended and “inactive” accounts [EN] and closing OpenID registration [RUS] (allowed LJ-users to comment in other blog-platforms). Blogger sviridenkov observes [RUS] more and more bloggers switching to stand-alone blogs, while Artur Welf says [RUS] disappointed users would rather prefer Facebook.

By Gregory Asmolov

Komsomolosk-on-Amur [ENG] city court, at the Russian Far East, ordered local Internet provider “Rosnet” to block access to Youtube and four other websites (including web.archive.org), Cnews reported [RUS]. The decision was made due to a request by the city prosecutor's office. YouTube had been blocked because of the nationalist movie “Russia for Russians”. Other websites were blocked because of hosting an electronic version of Hitler's “Main Kampf.”

By Oiwan Lam

Joel Martinsen from DANWEI translated a debate between a magazine, China Computer World, and a giant Internet company, Tencent.

By Lee Yoo Eun

More Koreans are noticing their suicide plans via Twitter, South Korea's internet media NoCut News reported[kr]. Most recently a club DJ tweeted ‘I will commit suicide, thank you guys till now' and the police was dipatched to his house. It was later found out that he had not committed suicide. Experts are interpreting the suicide twit as a desperate distress signal for life.

By Rezwan

Komal-Nishka Manglani at Blog Adda explains why businesses must embrace social media.

By Rezwan

Effendi at The Spittoon comments: “the Pakistan government has gone into damage control mode after the evidence of the ISI’s involvement in Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan was exposed and confirmed on WikiLeaks.”

By Janine Mendes-Franco

“I do believe that whether we like it or not, blogs are now part of the media. By definition we publish publicly and with that freedom comes responsibility” - which is why Breezeblog has voluntarily adopted the Media Council of Bermuda’s Code of Practice.