Open, Accountable, Appropriate: The Monday Round-Up

Last week was action-packed between the CIMA event on media development, Tech@State: real-time awareness, and beyond. Here are some highlights: 

• Discussion continued about the growing trend of Internet censorship, with troubling new reports coming out of Tibet, Iran, Tunisia, and Kazakhstan. 
• Google has followed Twitter's lead, instituting country-specific censorship on their Blogger platform.
• Hughuette Labelle spoke about the relationship between transparency and accountability, while UNDP looked at how social media is being used to fight corruption.
• The World Bank released a draft publication about the role crowdsourcing has in developing better governance. Patrick Meier has a good discussion of the findings on his blog.
• In Kenya, Twitter is being used to help fight crime. 
• Open Data has potential to empower people with information, and can help avoid information asymmetries. Tunisian politicans are using social media to help keep government open. 
• Radio continues to be an important medium for sharing information, as a new community radio station in Bangladesh is proving. But social media also has a role in keeping radio alive in today's world.
• Koert Debeuf looks at the transition of Twitter as Egypt moves from revolution to democracy.  
• Technology helps enhance human capacity, but people must have the skills to use technology effectively. Technology also needs to be appropriate, which can often mean low-tech. (We write about this a lot.)
• Africa's future continues to focus on mobile devices, including the often-overlooked feature phone.
• SMSinAction is a great site mapping as many SMS-based projects around the world as it can.
• This blog by CJ Cornell asks whether bloggers can be considered journalists.
• Courtney Radsch tells the story of women using social media during the revolutions in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt.
• DDOS attacks have increased nearly 2000% in the last three years.
• Microsoft is using maps to tell local stories. Linda Raftree is telling the local stories behind the maps. 
• UNDP has launched the first issue of the new Southern Innovator Magazine.
• Global Pulse has this great article on 'data philanthropy.'
• Google has launched a new 'Solve for X' think tank to take on global problems in innovative ways. 

We're also looking forward to next week's Social Media Week events, happening all around the world.