Which company has committed the greater evil? Yahoo Inc. helped send a reporter to prison by revealing his identity to the Chinese government. Cisco Systems Inc. helps send thousands of Chinese dissidents to prison by selling sophisticated Internet surveillance technology to China.

If bad press is to be the judge, the “stool pigeon” Yahoo is clearly the bigger villain. In 2004, after the Chinese government ordered the country’s media not to report on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, journalist Shi Tao used his Yahoo e-mail account to forward a government memo to a pro-democracy group. When China’s Internet police — a force of 30,000 — uncovered this, it pressured Yahoo to reveal Shi’s identity. Yahoo caved quicker than you can say Vichy France, and Shi is doing 10 years in a Chinese slammer for one click of his subversive mouse.

For ratting out Shi, Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang has been dragged before Congress, called a “moral pygmy” and forced to issue an apology. In contrast, Cisco and Chief Executive John Chambers have received little public scrutiny for providing China’s cadres of Comrade Orwells with the Internet surveillance technology they need to cleanse the Net of impure democratic thoughts.

Cisco is hardly alone in helping China keep the jackboot to the neck of its people. Skype, an EBay Inc. subsidiary, helps the Chinese government monitor and censor text messaging. Microsoft Corp. likewise is a willing conscript in China’s Internet policing army, as Bill Gates’ minions regularly cleanse the Chinese blogosphere. Google Inc.’s brainiacs, meanwhile, have built a special Chinese version of their powerful search engine to filter out things as diverse as the BBC, freeing Tibet and that four-letter word in China — democracy.

Read it all.

Do you find yourself going online more and more? You’re not alone.

Four out of five U.S. adults go online now, according to a new Harris Poll.

The survey, which polled 2,062 adults in July and October, found that 79 percent of adults — about 178 million — go online, spending an average 11 hours a week on the Internet.

“We’re up to almost 80 of adults who now are online, or are somehow gaining access to the Internet. That’s a pretty impressive figure,” said Regina Corso, director of the Harris Poll.

The results reflect a steady rise since 2000, when 57 percent of adults polled said they went online. In 2006, the number was 77 percent.

Read it all.

When [Graham] Mallaghan logged on, he found a group called For Those Who Hate The Little Fat Library Man, dedicated to insulting him.

One of Mallaghan’s responsibilities is to enforce the library’s noise regulations, and he believes the group was set up by students unhappy with his efforts. Mallaghan, who is 37, says that it quickly began to have an impact on all aspects of his life: “At its peak the group had 363 members. Both my wife and I had the brakes on our bikes cut. People would run up to me and take photos on their phone ”“ at one point there was a competition on the group for who could get the best close-up.”

Websites such as Facebook and MySpace are the primary exports of the Web 2.0 revolution, which brought user-created internet content to the fore. The biggest of the sites, MySpace, launched in August 2003 and now has more than 200 million accounts worldwide. Facebook has gathered more than 49 million accounts so far, including more than five million in the UK, its third-largest market. Globally it is adding 200,000 users a day. The MySpace audience is mainly composed of teenagers, while Facebook’s users are older ”“ dominated by college students and young professionals.

The sites have grown exponentially over the past four years by offering a fast, free and easy way for people to come together online and coalesce into an ever-shifting network of social connections around hotspots of friendship, work and shared interests. This can lend new energy to existing friendships and seed new ones at an astonishing rate. All you need is the patience to create your own homepage on one of these sites and the lack of inhibition required to start sharing details about yourself, your life and thoughts with the world. The doors of the social network are thrown open.

Read it all.

As The New York Times transforms itself into a multimedia news and information platform ”” the printed newspaper plus a robust nytimes.com offering breaking news, blogs, interactive graphics, video and more ”” it is struggling with a vexing problem. How does the august Times, which has long stood for dignified authority, come to terms with the fractious, democratic culture of the Internet, where readers expect to participate but sometimes do so in coarse, bullying and misinformed ways?

The answer so far is cautiously, carefully and with uneven success.

The issue is timely because last week, with very little notice, The Times took baby steps toward letting readers comment on its Web site about news articles and editorials, something scores of other newspapers have long permitted. On Tuesday, readers were invited to comment on a single article in Science Times and on the paper’s top editorial, using a link that accompanied each. Few did because there was no promotion of the change, but as the week went on and more articles were opened to comment, participation picked up.

The paper is creating a comment desk, starting with the hiring of four part-time staffers, to screen all reader submissions before posting them, an investment unheard of in today’s depressed newspaper business environment. The Times has always allowed reader comments on the many blogs it publishes, with those responses screened by the newsroom staff. That experience suggests what the paper is letting itself in for.

“I didn’t know how big it would become, and I didn’t know how tough it would be to manage,” said Jim Roberts, editor of the Web site.

We have been around and around on similar issues on this blog now for years. Read it all.

First, the upstart Christian video site became the nation’s fastest-growing Web property for August, according to ComScore’s Media Metrix. Its 1.7 million unique visitors represented a 973 percent increase in traffic over the previous month. In September, the number of visitors leveled off, but the length of the average user’s stay nearly doubled to 7.7 minutes, ComScore said.

Then last week, GodTube became the first religious Web site to offer the hot-ticket social media trinity: user-generated video (a la YouTube), social networking (a la MySpace and Facebook) and live Webcasting (a la Stickam.com). GodTube’s claim that it has become the most-trafficked Christian Web site is trumped only by a second boast: that by the sheer volume of video watched by its users – 1.5 million hours last month – it is now the world’s largest broadcaster of Christian video.

Read it all.

On YouTube, the wildly popular video-sharing site, the most-watched video clips include David Letterman’s public evisceration of Paris Hilton, music videos by Rihanna and Soulja Boy, and, of course, a young man’s heartfelt plea to “leave Britney alone.”

But YouTube’s ocean of clips ”” some of them trivial, offensive or just bizarre ”” now find themselves competing with a Web site from a higher authority ”” GodTube.

GodTube, the Christian response to YouTube, is the fastest-growing Web site on the Internet, and the site’s top videos reveal a community that couldn’t be more different than YouTube’s.

Read it all.

More than a decade after employers began cracking down on those who view online pornography at work, porn is continuing to create tension in offices across the nation ”” in part because laptop computers, cellphones and other portable devices have made it easier for risk-takers to visit such websites undetected.

Devices providing wireless access to the Internet appear to be giving the porn-at-work phenomenon a boost even as employers are getting more aggressive about using software to block workers’ access to inappropriate websites. About 65% of U.S. companies used such software in 2005, according to a survey by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute, up from 40% in 2001.

Many employers say that because it’s so easy to access porn on portable devices ”” even those that are company-owned and outfitted to block access to adult-oriented websites ”” they are increasingly concerned about being sued by employees who are offended when co-workers view naughty images.

With wireless devices, close monitoring of workers is “impossible. There’s nothing you can do,” says Richard Laermer, CEO of the public relations firm RLM. “Liability is the thing that keeps me up at night, because we are liable for things people do on your premises. It’s serious. I’ll see somebody doing it, and I’ll peek over their shoulder, and they’ll say, ‘I don’t know how that happened.’ It’s like 10-year-olds. And it’s always on company time.”

Through the years, surveys have indicated that many workers run across adult websites or images while at work, but few say they have done so intentionally.

About 16% of men who have access to the Internet at work acknowledged having seen porn while on the job, according to a survey for Websense by Harris Interactive in 2006. Eight percent of women said they had. But of those who acknowledged viewing porn sites at work, only 6% of men and 5% of women acknowledged that they had done so intentionally.

Read it all from the front page of today’s USA Today.

I normally roll my eyes at anything that smacks of the ”˜Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ vibe, but this post about gender differences in the blogosphere caught my attention.

According to Alex Iskold’s research, men dominate the top 20 blogs tracked by Technorati, which tend to focus on technology, while women blog more about books and family than men.

The results are hardly surprising ”“ the blogosphere is bound to reflect pre-existing interests, which are bound to reflect pre-existing cultural factors – but do they matter?

Read it all.

Silicon Valley’s math is getting fuzzy again.

Internet companies with funny names, little revenue and few customers are commanding high prices. And investors, having seemingly forgotten the pain of the first dot-com bust, are displaying symptoms of the disorder known as irrational exuberance.

Consider Facebook, the popular but financially unproven social networking site, which is reportedly being valued by investors at up to $15 billion. That is nearly half the value of Yahoo, a company with 38 times as many employees and, based on estimates of Facebook’s income, 32 times more revenue. Google, which recently surged past $600 a share, is now worth more than IBM, a company with eight times more revenue.

More broadly, Internet start-ups are drawing investment based on their ability to build an audience, not bring in revenue – the very alchemy that many say led to the inflating and undoing of the dot-com bubble.

The surge in the perceived value of some start-ups has even surprised some entrepreneurs who are benefiting from it.

A year ago, Yahoo invested in Right Media, a New York company developing an online advertising network. Yahoo’s investment valued the company at $200 million. Six months later, when Yahoo acquired Right Media outright, the purchase price had swelled to $850 million.

Read it all.

Religion in American History–check it out.

AS I was in the final throes of getting my most recent book into print, an employee at the publishing company sent me an e-mail message that stopped me in my tracks.

I had met her just once, at a meeting. We were having an e-mail exchange about some crucial detail involving publishing rights, which I thought was being worked out well. Then she wrote: “It’s difficult to have this conversation by e-mail. I sound strident and you sound exasperated.”

At first I was surprised to hear I had sounded exasperated. But once she identified this snag in our communications, I realized that something had really been off. So we had a phone call that cleared everything up in a few minutes, ending on a friendly note.

The advantage of a phone call or a drop-by over e-mail is clearly greatest when there is trouble at hand. But there are ways in which e-mail may subtly encourage such trouble in the first place.

This is becoming more apparent with the emergence of social neuroscience, the study of what happens in the brains of people as they interact. New findings have uncovered a design flaw at the interface where the brain encounters a computer screen: there are no online channels for the multiple signals the brain uses to calibrate emotions.

Face-to-face interaction, by contrast, is information-rich. We interpret what people say to us not only from their tone and facial expressions, but also from their body language and pacing, as well as their synchronization with what we do and say.

Read it all. Of course this is also true of blogs and blog comments. Might I suggest that before you post a comment you ask–is this written in such a way that it is least likely to be misunderstood? KSH.

The Internet seems like an infinite source of information and knowledge, yet we often allow it and other digital technology to be infinitely distracting. Cell phones, e-mail, and IM are tried and true digital distractions. Today, that’s advanced to satellite television, social networks, and text messaging. These technologies create a sense of urgency due to their instantaneous or mobile natures. We’ve allowed the dings, buzzes, and chimes to interrupt everything from meals, meetings, and movies. We’ve yielded to urgency or perhaps better put, been fooled into believing that next e-mail, phone call, headline update, or text message is indeed urgent.

In 1967, Charles Hummel wrote an essay about the “tyranny of the urgent,” where his point was not that we have insufficient time to accomplish tasks but rather that we prioritize the urgent over the important:

“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.”

Since his essay was written in a less digital world, Hummel references the impact of the telephone on the urgent, “A man’s home is no longer his castle; it is no longer a place away from urgent tasks because the telephone breaches the walls with imperious demands.” The latter part of the sentence could now read, “it is no longer a place away from urgent tasks because cable, satellite, Internet, cell phones, etc. breach the walls with imperious demands.”

The urgent is synonymous with the now. It relates to the “What are you doing?” question of Twitter, ostensibly the most egregious of urgency offenders. In the always-on always-connected urgent world, so much time can be spent “keeping up” with new stories, new e-mails, new text messages, and new updates of various types that “keeping up” becomes a task itself. In fact, it teeters on becoming the task of the day; the news of our lives never stops.

But how much is too much?….

Read it all.

The last few days I’ve been catching up on the Christian apologetics blogosphere. One of the most interesting thimgs being commented on is Time magazine’s recent article on Mother Theresa and her “crisis of faith”. The wave of discussions rippling through the blog continuum ranges from highs of thoughtful discussion to lows of anti-Catholic and atheistic hate.

Among the best discussions were those found at Titus One Nine, an Anglican-Episcopal blog. At T19 the discussion focused on the the wonderful gift that God had bestowed on Mother Theresa. The comments were full of love and intelligence. Little wonder that Kendall Harmon’s T19 blog is a daily read for me.

—Christian Apologetics Society; a good reminder for those of you who take the trouble to pray and comment thoughtfully–it does not go unnoticed–KSH.

Older people are sticky.

That is the latest view from Silicon Valley. Technology investors and entrepreneurs, long obsessed with connecting to teenagers and 20-somethings, are starting a host of new social networking sites aimed at baby boomers and graying computer users.

The sites have names like Eons, Rezoom, Multiply, Maya’s Mom, Boomj, and Boomertown. They look like Facebook ”” with wrinkles.

And they are seeking to capitalize on what investors say may be a profitable characteristic of older Internet users: they are less likely than youngsters to flit from one trendy site to the next.

“Teens are tire kickers ”” they hang around, cost you money and then leave,” said Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist and author of the blog “Infectious Greed.” Where Friendster was once the hot spot, Facebook and MySpace now draw the crowds of young people online.

“The older demographic has a bunch of interesting characteristics,” Mr. Kedrosky added, “not the least of which is that they hang around.”

This prospective and relative stickiness is helping drive a wave of new investment into boomer and older-oriented social networking sites that offer like-minded (and like-aged) individuals discussion and dating forums, photo-sharing, news and commentary, and chatter about diet, fitness and health care.

Last week, VantagePoint Ventures, an early investor in MySpace, announced that it had led a $16.5 million round of financing for Multiply, a social networking site aimed at people who are settled.

Read it all.

Check it out.

The claim of those who organized this is:

We are evangelical and catholic Anglicans, and fellow travelers from the wider household of God, assembled and summoned to a common labor in the ecumenical Church of Christ, not least through the present struggles and gifts of our communities.

We recognize that the Anglican Communion””the first instance of ecclesiality with which we, in this particular online assembly, wrestle for a blessing””is incomplete by itself, because we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands the wounds of our Lord’s body: the countless factions and disputes that do not bring Him glory, leaving us all together far short of our call to “share,” as sisters and brothers visibly united, in the “partnership” of His offering (I Cor 10.14ff.).

In a sense it has ever been so. We recall St Paul’s outrage with the Corinthians, who “came together (synerchesthai) ”¦not for the better but for the worse,” a sobering point too-little reflected upon in our day by those, on all sides, who find the Church’s unity and orthodoxy uncomplicated””either simply given, or obviously taken away. Against both of these views, Paul insists that “there have to be factions (hairesis) among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine” (I Cor 11.17-19). And yet the Apostle does not on that account “commend” the Corinthians for showing “contempt for the Church of God and humiliat[ing] those who have nothing” (I Cor 11:22). Rather, Paul’s argument devolves to his prior exhortation to learn from the “example” of “Israel,” “written down to instruct us,” “so that we might not desire evil” but instead the singular “blessing that we bless.” Only upon this, objective basis: the blood and body of Christ unveiled, will the Corinthians learn to “do everything for the glory of God,” that is, to “give no offense to Jews or Greeks or to the Church,” to “please everyone in everything,” and not seek their “own advantage,” so that “many”¦ may be saved” (I Cor 10).

Read it all–you won’t believe it.

The rapid growth of political blogs and Web sites has attracted the attention of state elections officials, who are considering what, if any, new regulations should be imposed on the Internet.

The go-slow approach by the state Public Disclosure Commission (PDC), which collects candidates’ financial information and enforces elections laws, is applauded by most bloggers and campaign experts, though some say policing the Internet is unnecessary and all but impossible.

As early as this month, the PDC may consider new political communication regulations, with much of the discussion likely to focus on whether to extend federal rules governing the Internet to local races.

Read it all.

College of Charleston business professor Bing Pan thinks people might trust the Internet search engine Google a little too much.

Pan and his colleagues conducted research, published in the April issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, on how college students make their selections using the popular search engine. The researchers looked at where students’ eyes traveled on a Google results page and which links they clicked on.

Pan conducted the research while he was in a post- doctoral program at Cornell University. The research was partially funded by Google.

Pan said he found that when making a selection, users consider both the content of the site, which they get from reading the abstract on the results page, and the position it holds on the page.

“But position influences people more,” he said.

Read it all.

Read it all.

In the broadest definition, Generation-X encompasses folks born from 1960 to 1979.

Take a look at the Anglican blogosphere. Kendall Harmon, for example, was born in 1960. I was born in 1971. I don’t know when, exactly, Sarah Hey, Matt Kennedy, the Ould brothers, Binky, Mike the CaNNet ninja, the Confessing Reader, Baby Blue, and Greg Griffith were born, but I have hung out with them a good bit and we are all in the same generation, that being Generation-X.

On the “other” side of the Anglican blogosphere are hard core baby boomers like Mark Harris, Elizabeth Kaeton, Jan Nunley, and Jim Naughton.

Coincidence?

Read it all. For the record, I usually get roped into the end of the Baby Boomers, which many people date to those born until 1963. I don’t identify either with Generation X or the Baby Boomers. Generation X is sometimes described as filled with those who have no sense of a narrative structure in their lives (but are looking for one), and maybe there is a search for narrative in their blogs–I certainly sense so–KSH.

People using CIA and FBI computers have edited entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia on topics including the Iraq war and the Guantanamo prison, according to a new tracing program.

The changes may violate Wikipedia’s conflict-of-interest guidelines, a spokeswoman for the site said on Thursday.

The program, WikiScanner, was developed by Virgil Griffith of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and posted this month on a Web site that was quickly overwhelmed with searches.

Read it all.

The internet has become a playground for criminals in which highly specialised gangs steal money from bank accounts, according to a Parliamentary report published today.

A huge underground economy is making a living from e-crime, which fuels the perception of the internet as a lawless “Wild West”, the peers report said.

Millions of pounds are being lost by banks around the world as a result of online banking fraud, including £33.5 million lost by British banks last year.

Read it all.

Online virtual world Second Life has a new player – the Anglican Church.

A medieval Anglican cathedral was built in the popular role-playing site five weeks ago and the church started holding services last month.

The idea is the brainchild of Bible Society NZ chief executive Mark Brown. Brown said Second Life had news channels and universities operating within it, but no church. He saw the venture as an opportunity to reach the virtual world’s 8million strong population.

The church has over 150 members and holds Sunday services three times during the day to accommodate different time zones.

“Just a few months ago we had five members and it was just a vision, but it seems to have captured people’s imagination,” he said.

“People are coming to try it out and we are getting some slow building, within 4 to 6 weeks we will have to turn people away.”

Read it all.

Is nothing sacred anymore?

E-mail use is invading the inner sanctums of church pew, bathroom and boudoir.

E-mail use is invading the inner sanctums of church pew, bathroom and boudoir.

A new study of more than 4,000 Americans over 13, including 200 from the Chicago area, found that 12 percent of mobile e-mail users look at their e-mail on their cell phones, personal digital assistants and other wireless devices while in church. And 12 percent catch up with e-mail in the john.

Read it all.

Following several months of retreats and meetings about the future of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh’s relationship with the national church, the bishop’s office last week launched a Web site to provide resources for parishes and individuals “in deciding how to go forward.”

The site — www.parishtoolbox.org — will collect information on the critical issues at hand involving not only the diocese’s future configuration but also the question of whether it remains part of the national church. A majority of the diocese’s 20,000 members disagree with actions the Episcopal Church has taken since 2003, including a failure to stop same-sex blessings and the election of an openly gay bishop.

At a May retreat, diocesan leadership and Bishop Robert W. Duncan Jr. outlined four options for the diocese: maintaining the status quo, “submitting” to the will of the national church, “dissolving” the diocese or attempting, as a diocese, to leave the church.

Bishop Duncan said at the time he would not remain bishop under the first two alternatives, and would eventually leave his position if the diocese were dissolved.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Good for him.

A couple who authorities say were so obsessed with the Internet and video games that they left their babies starving and suffering other health problems have pleaded guilty to child neglect.

The children of Michael and Iana Straw, a boy age 22 months and a girl age 11 months, were severely malnourished and near death last month when doctors saw them after social workers took them to a hospital, authorities said. Both children are doing well and gaining weight in foster care, prosecutor Kelli Ann Viloria told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Michael Straw, 25, and Iana Straw, 23, pleaded guilty Friday to two counts each of child neglect. Each faces a maximum 12-year prison sentence.

Read it all.

How interesting to come across this story from the NY Times today (hat tip to Pat Dague) after we’d already prepared to post the entry below on the new faith and politics blog that’s past of the Washington Post/Newsweek’s On Faith site. Blogging, faith, and politics especially in relation to the 2008 Presidential election certainly seem to be a very hot topic at the moment.

WASHINGTON ”” The morning meeting could have been at any news outlet, with discussion around the glass conference-room table about stem cells, Iraq and the presidential candidates. But afterward the members of the small group in the room bowed their heads in prayer.

“I just pray for all of us, reporters, photographers and editors,” said David Brody, a reporter. “Give us the strength to get through the day. Bless our work, Lord. Give us the right words to say.”

Mr. Brody, 42, writes a blog and covers politics for the Christian Broadcasting Network, the television station founded by Pat Robertson. With the three leading Republican presidential candidates in the early going each confronting his own serious obstacles in winning over evangelical Christians, Mr. Brody occupies a position of influence in the 2008 presidential campaign as a gatekeeper to a crucial constituency.

CBN has about a million viewers a day on television, making it a big platform for Mr. Brody and the Republican candidates.

In addition, Mr. Brody’s blog, the Brody File, which scours the conservative credentials of Republican candidates but also looks at Democrats on occasion, has become required reading for political insiders, and is frequently cited by mainstream news organizations and bloggers on both ends of the political spectrum. With its blend of reporting, jokey commentary and savvy explanations of the concerns of evangelical voters, it now draws almost 100,000 hits a month, more than five times the traffic it was getting just several months ago.

Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York recently became the latest Republican presidential candidate to appear with Mr. Brody on the network’s main news program, “The 700 Club,” with segments posted on the Brody File. Earlier this year, Mr. Brody interviewed Senator John McCain of Arizona. He has twice sat down with Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.

The full article is here.

The link to the Brody File is here.

———

This elf confesses that she isn’t yet following the Presidential election very closely, has never to her knowledge read the Brody File, and doesn’t have a lot of political blogs in her list of bookmarks. (Unless, of course we’re talking ANGLICAN politcs! That’s a whole ‘nother story! 😉 )

What political blogs do you all recommend, and which do a good job of focusing on issues of faith and politics?

Newsweek and the Washington Post have launched a new branch of their “On Faith” blog/website: Georgetown/On Faith. Here’s what the blog has to say about its scope and goals:

THE GOD VOTE
The Religion-Industrial Complex
–

The 2008 presidential election is probably the first in American history that has spawned a veritable faith and politics industry.

Entire non-profit organizations, university departments, think tanks, polling operations, and web divisions at prestigious East coast newspapers, have marshaled their resources in an attempt to make sense of the role that religion will play in the run for the White House. The industry is immense. Its wares displayed on every boulevard, sidewalk and back alley of the mass media. Its potential for influencing public opinion is considerable.

The faith and politics industry also has a variety of “applied” or “hands-on” subsidiaries. There are the lobbyists who work for religious special interest groups. There are demographers who conduct surveys for any client willing to cough up the fee. There is the very lucrative traffic in what I call “religious imaging.” By this I refer to the work of political consultants–an astonishing percentage of whom are graduates of theological seminaries–who advise and often rehabilitate candidates who have somehow drifted off (religious) message.

And did I mention that the industry is completely deregulated? That is to say, there are no standards for entrance, let alone excellence. No one seems to be interested in the identity of the employees or employers in the industry. It doesn’t hold annual conventions in a big, deep carpet-y Hotel where everyone gets to expense their meals back to Headquarters. In fact, no one seems to have much to say about the industry as a whole. It floats under the radar. Which is strange because as regards religion and politics the Industry is the radar.

The goal of this blog is to change that by casting a self-reflexive glance on the 2008 faith industry from a non-partisan perspective (about which more anon). By necessity, this will be an incomplete look, a peek. The industry is so vast and decentralized that no one observer could hope to cover it all. But, if all goes well I hope to draw your attention to key trends, emerging patterns, failures of judgment, and moments of critical heroism that will come to pass in 2008.

The rest is here.