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It’s about film, sports, politics, music, science and everything else all connected together. Our contributors are collecting data from all over the internet to build a massive, collaboratively-edited database of cross-linked data. Its a big job and we’re just getting started.

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Freebase… its a free online database. this could be handy for all kinds of data sharing.

Lauren Weinstein’s Blog: Newly Revealed FBI Data Abuses and the Data Retention Red Flag:

Broad abuses of retained data are now demonstrated to be real, not theoretical, as described in .this Washington Post story

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Lauren has a nice post outlining some of his insights and furthering his points about the problems of the governments abuse of information.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?type=wmv&id=17635

They keep gameplay simple, but the play is brilliant.

If MSFT had designed vi:
A funny posting from Sun&#8217;s Marigan&#8217;s blog (thanks Don).

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hehehehe

Changing politics through digital networks: The role of ICTs in the
formation of new social and political actors and actions.

5-6 October 2007, Political Science Faculty, University of Florence, Italy

Organized by:

Department of Political Science and Sociology (DISPO), University of
Florence in collaboration with the Social Informatics Research Unit (SIRU)
based in the Department of Sociology, University of York

Sponsored by the journal: Information, Communication and Society (iCS)

Key note speakers include:

o Lance Bennett (University of Washington, USA)
o Donatella della Porta (European University Institute, Florence, Italy)
o Tim Jordan (Open University UK)
o Michele Micheletti (Karlstad University, Sweden)

It will address such questions as:

o How can ICTs be best used to facilitate the formation of social and
political identities?

o Do the ways ICTs are embedded in new social and political movements
contribute to change the sociological content of the relationships between
them, their members and their constituency?

o How can ICTs be best used to influence political processes and outcomes
at local, national and transnational levels?

Theoretical and empirical works focusing on political and
sociological aspects of such analytical dimensions as power structures,
organization, technologies, communication, individual and collective
behaviors are welcomed.

The full cfp and submission details are available on the symposium website
at: http://www.york.ac.uk/res/siru/dispo/

Links for 2007-03-09 [del.icio.us]:

• Big Brother State – an animated short by David Scharf
• fantastic animated short about government surveillance and our rights — i’m going to show this to my students.

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  Dan points toward this cool flash video explaining the nature and issues with the big brother state and mass surveillance.