Summary of this week

The main focus of this blog is on studying how the Internet is being used for the purpose of solving world's most difficult problems. Below are the articles I found particularly interesting this week, categorically sorted. You can find much more articles at http://www.diigo.com/user/web-evolution.


[Government]
http://personaldemocracy.com/node/14557
OpenID and government. It's still a tentative project but might have significant impact in the future.

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS139396+09-Sep-2009+BW20090909
Some major internet companies are collaborating with government to support an open ID initiative.

http://personaldemocracy.com/node/14616
An insightful and informative summary of various government2.0 movements. Links to other articles are also availabe, which is quite useful.

http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/10/07/crowd-sourced-initiatives-to-create-a-more-livable-new-york-city/
Open government initiative by the N.Y.C government. If the U.S. gov and the N.Y.C gov, most complex organizations of all, could succeed in their initiatives, why would it be impossible for others to follow them?


[Science]
 http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/dramatic-growth-of-open-access.html
Some statistical data of open science publications. You can see how rapidly this movement is growing.

http://hul.harvard.edu/news/2009_0914_compact.html
http://www.oacompact.org/
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000165
Several prominent universities, including Harvard, MIT and UC Berkeley, joined forces to put forward the open access publication movement.

http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2009/09/frameworks-and-lessons-from-public.html
An interesting model of participatory science and how these participation models are actually being used in various scientific researches.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0410/p14s01-sten.htm?print=true
Some examples of citizen science and insightful analysis on them.


http://www.scienceonline2010.com/index.php/wiki/Program_Finalization
A Wiki-draft of science online 2010 conference. Some important information is also available here.

http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Online+Resources
An exhaustive list of scientific blogs. A great number of prominent scientists, especially mathematicians, have started experimenting on blogs, which shows the strong compatibility between mathematics and blog.


[Health]
http://blog.kruresearch.com/2009/08/video-patient-revolution/
A video of health2.0 activity and a list of those featured in the video. The most optimistic end of this movement.

http://www.fastcompany.com/future-of-health-care?page=0%2C0
What the future of health care might look like.


[Learning]
 http://travelinedman.blogspot.com/2009/08/20-quick-points-from-world-is-open-how.html
http://www.amazon.co.jp/World-Open-Technology-Revolutionizing-Education/dp/0470461306
How the web might change the landscape of learning and education. Useful outline.

http://www.openculture.com/2007/07/freeonlinecourses.html
A list of online learinng resources.


[Global]
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/where-google-is-really-big-india-and-china/?partner=rss&emc=rss
How BRICs countries are using the web to improve their lives and roles Google plays there.

http://connect.state.gov/
Run by a governemtn bureau and it seems the participants are quite active. Might serve as a platform for grass-root democracy trying to solve difficult diplomatic issues in a bottom-up manner.

http://www.betterplace.org/projects
Use of the Internet to financially and socially help those in need.

http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/charity-waters-lessons-winning-twitter
http://twitter.com/charityWater
A dollar, with which people in developed nations can hardly buy a sandwitch, can save many lives in the most impoverished areas. Global arbitrage in terms of wealth and knowledge, is one of the greatest things made possible by the Internet.

http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2009/10/happy-internet-human-rights-day.html
Declaration of Internet Human Rights by 15 Chinese intellectuals.


[Finance]
 http://www.finovate.com/flagship09/index.html
A list of companies and participants who are trying to change the status quo of the finance industry using (mainly) now mature social web technologies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/19/AR2009091900124.html
Growing impact of peer to peer lending (borrowing) in developing countries. Some statistics available.

 
[CrowdSourcing]
http://www.letsdoitworld.org/
Crowd source initiatives to clean up the globe. The most significant event happened in Estonia this summer, where more than 500,000 people got organized 'crowd sourcingly' and cleaned up the country, which would've cost the country millions of dollars if initiated by the government.


[Media]
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/10/eight-public-media-20-projects-that-are-doing-it-right279.html
Some examples of successful media initiatives while most others are failing.


[Language]
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/the-polyglot-internet/
http://www.worldwidelexicon.org/s/essay.html
http://www.plansphere.com/blog/?p=607
Collaborative translation. Will the language barriers, one of the biggest obstacles for a truly globalized world, ever be overcome?


[Others]
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough?currentPage=all
On a new type of consumers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/business/20amazon.html
Amazon meets retails business.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/system/topicRoot/The_End_of_Lawyers/
On how the Internet might affect lawyers' lives and how law practices are conducted. Many related articles available.

http://www.redefinegod.com/
http://www.mahalo.com/open-source-religion-religion-2-0
Open source religion movements.

http://www.themobilecity.nl/2009/10/09/593/
How the internet can improve cities.

http://earth2tech.com/greennet-09-presentations/bob-metcalfe/
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/enernet-the-internet-of-energy/2009/10/11
The internet and energy. Will what happend to the Internet at its early age happen to the energy industry by Bob Metcalfe, advocate of Metcalfe's law?

http://www.mindmeister.com/28717702/everything-open-and-free
A very informative tree map on open access movements.


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