The month stars with a lot of activity and already the Christmas celebrations seem far off. The month was dominated by one key issues – SOPA – but now even SOPA seems far off with more tales of censorship – first from the Google privacy policy (Google seeks to clarify new privacy policy) . The trend of censorship continues with Twitter as (Twitter Announces Micro-Censorship Policy) described by many as social suicide(Twitter Commits Social Suicide) and with memories of SOPA not far away – here comes ACTA(The EU and 22 member states sign the controversial ACTA ‘Internet surveillance’ treaty)
Social media continues to also evolve and impact us in more ways (Google+ Welcomes Teens) and we discuss should your social media presence live on after your death (Facebook After Death: What Should the Law Say?) and social music comes of age(Facebook launches ‘Listen With’ feature, lets you enjoy music with your friends). Both the United Nations(How Nations Can Be United With Social Media – the United Nation’s social media policy) and the CIA(Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community — Central Intelligence Agency) provide excellent insights on their social media policy
The Cloud is always in focus. Rackspace – nasa spawanned opensource cloud initiative open stack gets the support of AT&T (AT&T Joins OpenStack, Floats Cloud Architect) and a (UK Study Says That Cloud Computing Has Positive Impact On Businesses) and Web economy ‘to double by 2016‘ says the Boston Consulting Group. However, that does not prevent governments like Iran who continue to prosecute bloggers(Iran arrests wave of bloggers, writers and programmers | Sci-Tech | Deutsche Welle) and (the EU Commission proposes a comprehensive reform of the data protection rules) which affects cloud computing
Following the last EIF event on the (challenges of publishing news in the Digital era we see innovation from journalism( How Journalists Are Using FrontlineSMS to Innovate Around the World) and and academia (American University to Offer Master’s in News Entrepreneurship) and Clay Shirky offers his insights(Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users « Clay Shirky)
The world of media also continues to evolve with the rise and rise of ebooks (E-Books Outsell Print For Majority Of Titles On USA Today Bestseller List) and traditional journal publishers struggle(Blog blast births boffin boycott of publisher Elsevier) and Netflix continues to clarify(Netflix Streaming Margins Are 11 Percent, DVD Margins Are 52 Percent)
The world of mobile also shows that old is gold?(Nokia celebrates 1.5bn S40 phones) but the old is changing(Yes, Apple’s iMessage is killing the text message, and I love it) and the iPhone continues to dominate(IPhone accounts for more than 80 percent of AT&T smartphone sales) and we all continue to learn(UK mobile operator O2 sends your phone number to every website you visit)
Finally, two great book reviews: Reid Hoffman(linkedin founder’s book) (The real way to build a social network) and Rebecca MacKinnon’s book(Book Review: Consent of the Networked by Rebecca MacKinnon)
