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MySpace Trial

The Lori Drew case has received a lot of media attention due to its technology angle. Briefly, Drew is charged with three counts of violating federal computer statutes and one count of conspiracy, for creating a fake MySpace account she allegedly used to help torment her daughter's friend, 13-year-old Megan Meier who later committed suicide. This Wikipedia article summarizes the case.

Spam's Effectiveness

One spam email generates one response for every 12,500,000 emails a spammer sends out.

Yet spammers are still making a lot of money - US$7000 per day! This is less than they used to make, however, so perhaps spam filters and human behavior have improved filtering mechanism.

A new study found these results. The study made no promises for a longer life or greater happiness.

Can Internet-based Activism Migrate to the Governmental Level?

Without question, one of the big success stories to emerge from the 2008 presidential election is the Obama campaign's use of the Internet and web 2.0 tools to reach people.

Webcasts as a New Recruiting Tool for the US Army

The US Army has used innovative recruiting tools for a long time: video games and websites, for example, are two ways that technology is used to reach out to potential recruits.

Starting on Veterans' Day the Army added webcasts (video podcasts) to its arsenal of tools, complete with Q&A.

Giovanni Vigna and Electronic Voting Systems: The Taxpayers bought Ferraris but got Pintos.

Giovanni Vigna spoke on October 23 about his work as part of a security team looking at electronic voting machines. A video of the talk is below.

Web 2.0 coverage of the Santa Barbara Tea Fire

It is tough to be a Santa Barbara resident when you need news coverage. Most of our network affiliates are actually based in Santa Maria, an hour north, or in San Luis Obispo, an hour and 1/2 north, except for

The Economic Impact on Open Source

What will the impact of the economic downturn be on open source projects? The Internet Evolution blog looks at this issue.

There are two sides:

Perhaps more individuals will participate in open source projects? As Keen posits perhaps, "hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of newly redundant Americans will have nothing to do all day except contribute to wikis or become citizen journalists or "work" on their Facebook or MySpace pages."

Christian Science Monitor moves to online only

After a century of continuous publication, The Christian Science Monitor will abandon its weekday print edition and appear online only, its publisher announced Tuesday. The CSM is the first major national paper to make such a change. Could this start a trend?

The CSM was one of the earliest newspapers online, starting in 1995.

The paper's circulation has fallen from a peak of 223,000 in 1970 to about 50,000 now, while its online traffic has soared. The newspaper gets about 5 million page-views per month, compared with about 4 million five years ago and 1 million a decade ago.

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Twittering the Vote

We've already covered Twittering the debates, and now as voting day approaches, Twitter users are also tweeting about their voting experiences. Watch the live feed here. If you're interested in tweeting your own experience, send to #votereport.

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