Nur Ahmad Furlong

Tag: google

  • After the fall of SOPA, ACTA, Google & Twitter sneaks in back door censorship

    Hot on the heals of the successful defeat of the move to impose SOPA / PIPA, a new even more dangerous piece of legislation seems to have just reared it’s ugly head. This follows the the recent action against one of the web’s most prominent file sharing networks MegaUpload(being taken down), showing us that though the legislation has not come into effect yet, Governments are easily able to take action in terms of the spirit of these pieces of legislation without any problems.

    The Case of Kim “DotCom”, owner of MegaUploads may not be the best of examples seeing the guy was living a really lavish and unbecoming lifestyle off of the profits generated from his network. What is significant is that MegaUpload was one of the largest, accounting for almost 1% of US net traffic with a huge following.

    So it comes as no surprise that an even more widespread and possibly mroe dangerous piece of legislation is being forced through not only in the US but internationally. One of the most concerning factors in this Saga is the timing of all of this, co-inciding with a wide range of other legal actions taken by governments to curtail civil liberties and to clamp down on the free spread of infomation which governments deem a threat. Wikipedia defines ACTA as –

    The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a draft plurilateral agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards forintellectual property rights enforcement.

    It will become mandatory for ISP’s to enforce the legislation or become liable for it’s contravention should their user’s be found guilty.

    We’ve seen additional corrosion of privacy from most notably Google with it’s new unified Privacy Policy seen by many as a mere announcement of intent to spy and share personal information including communications, interests and inclinations of it’s users in a more comprehensive manner.

    Twitters new censorship policy of taking down content on a country by country basis surfaces at exactly the same time. No doubt these are all linked, and the decisions by these major players have been informed by their consultation with the authorities who use these tools to track sentiment and clamp down on objectors.

    After witnessing clamp downs on social media and spread of information connected to the Arab spring, and the stifling of the OWS movement in the US, these pieces of legislation no doubt have more than piracy as a target.

    It’s up to us, citizens of the web to organise, speak out and strategize ways to keep our world alive, free and safe so we can continue to make our voices heard, and protect ourselves from the times to come.

    Check out Electronics Frontier Foundation, for the latest info and action on net privacy, activism and related issues. Sign the Avaaz Anti ACTA petition – http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet/

     

  • Web Trends Map 2009 – An Information Design Masterpiece

    Following a re-tweet about a post discussing web typography, sorry I forget who initially tweeted this one, I was confronted with a piece of information design work which had me absolutely speechless. I’ve seen previous versions of the Web Trends Map, but this latest installment is a real work of art.

    Information Design to make your mouth Water

    This is a masterpiece of information design
    This is a masterpiece of information design

    The Web Trend Map is a yearly publication by Information Architects Inc. (iA). It maps the 333 leading Web domains and the 111 most influential Internet people onto the Tokyo Metro map.

    I can’t wait for this to be finalized so I can get hold of a printed copy for my office.

    What the Map really means.

    According to the creator’s of this map of juicy web goodness, countless hours of research was undertaken to assess to most effective, profitable and traffic generating websites and web gurus to put together a resource which is filled with the web’s most influential spaces and faces.

    These web trends have been intelligently super-imposed over a map of the Tokyo Metro System, aligning those web venues which have similar characteristics to the actually Tokyo Metro spaces they virtually occupy. For example:

    Google is placed in the busiest, most highly trafficked train station in the world: Shinjuku.

    The width of an entities station represents it’s stability in the web space.

    Trend Lines/Genres

    Metro lines were established to group similar web entities. Upon investigation you’ll quickly realise what a mammoth task of information architecture this must have been. Further more, characteristics like the height of specific stations on the Virtual Map, represent the web entities success in terms of both traffic & revenue, which explains of course why Google towers above the rest. The use of various coloured lines and the position of certain stations at intersections of 1, 2 or 3 lines expresses which trend lines specific web entities actually cross or overlap.

    Just a quick glance across the Trend Map reveals a wealth of information and insight into the current shape of the web sphere. I can see this map being presented in thousands of boardrooms and strategic sessions world-wide. It’s got that buzz appeal which the Orielly Web 2.0 Tag Cloud held at the beginning of the entrance of Web 2.0 into the mainstream. The many so called “social media gurus” out there are gonna eat this one up for breakfast lunch & supper.

    This is very much still a work of art and feedback is being taken currently to make it as accurate, error free and apt as it can possibly be.

    I’ve spent only a few minutes glancing at this web wonder and have already foreseen endless hours of my future dissappear in the journey this one is about to open for me. I’ll stop myself from using the cliche’s of beautiful, stunning, elegant to describe this one, even though these and more over used adjectives definitely apply in this case.