site updates
- Professor Balaram talks Open Access — by Tom Dane — last modified Aug 03, 2012 11:10 PM
- Last week Tom Dane spoke with Professor P Balaram, Director of the Indian Institute of Science, about his thoughts on the Open Access movement. A podcast of the interview is available for download in the audio player within this post.
- The Write Stuff — by Prasad Krishna — last modified Nov 14, 2011 03:32 AM
- “Digital natives are no longer those youngsters who fit in the bracket of a Harvard return professional, glued to their PC all day,” says Nishant Shah, director of research, Centre for Internet and Society, a Bengaluru-based organisation. For Nishant, and many youngsters across the globe, digital natives are not any of those secluded geeks who spend hours on the Internet. “I am a homemaker, yet I am a digital native,” says Nilofer Ansher, a community manager who manages members from across three continents.
- The Book of Jobs — by Prasad Krishna — last modified Nov 14, 2011 03:27 AM
- The man who made the computer personal, who changed the face of the digital media industry, who was inspired by Zen philosophy to create an eight-billion-dollar empire, Steve Jobs, died last month. Just a few weeks before his death, in the midst of his painful illness, he told Walter Isaacson, the man chosen to write his authorised biography, “I really want to believe that something survives”. And Isaacson wrote him a fairy tale which will make sure that Jobs will be remembered beyond the gizmos and gimmicks.
- The Wikimedia India Program Trust — by Prasad Krishna — last modified Nov 13, 2011 07:58 AM
- A new entity, the “Wikimedia India Program Trust”, has now been formed and registered (in Delhi.) This will be the organization that will eventually drive India programs and house the team in India.
- CIS Comments on Finance Committee Statements to Open Letters on Unique Identity — by Prasad Krishna — last modified Nov 13, 2011 02:39 AM
- We from the Centre for Internet and Society had sent six open letters to the Parliamentary Finance Committee on the UID. The Committee responded through an email on 12 October 2011. Our response to the points raised is reproduced below.
- Comments on the National Policy of Information Technology — by Prasad Krishna — last modified Nov 09, 2011 10:28 AM
- The NPIT 2011 has the laudable goal of making India a ‘knowledge economy with a global role’ by developing and deploying ICT solutions in all sectors to foster development within India and at a global level. The policy identifies several praiseworthy goals such as the promotion of open standards and open technologies, accessibility for persons with disabilities, affordable ICT services, transparency, accountability, technology development for Indian languages, placing data in public domain for use and value addition, using social media to engage with citizens and investing in indigenous R&D and capacity building. We deeply appreciate this initiative of the Department of Information Technology and offer below brief comments to strengthen the draft.
- TRAI urged to take action against P2P throttling and DNS hijacking — by Anand Priya Singh — last modified Mar 27, 2012 06:07 AM
- On 4 November 2010, Anand had sent a complaint letter to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) regarding unethical practices adopted by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), particularly Airtel. The letter was sent by post and through an e-mail. It was addressed to the Advisor, CN & IT, TRAI. Anand got no help from the ISP and the reply from TRAI (No. 340-1\2010-CA/VOLv) stated that he contact the nodal officer. We have reproduced below the complaint letter that Anand sent to TRAI.
- Sources of CIS Funding — by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Jul 07, 2018 01:19 AM
- CIS's donors' names and the amount of the grants they've provided are being published in an effort to be absolutely transparent and to make it clear that our donors do not dictate the policy and research positions we espouse.
- ‘Not mandatory’ but maids, guards get fingerprinted — by Prasad Krishna — last modified Nov 09, 2011 05:16 AM
- The Cubbon Park police have begun profiling domestic help in their jurisdiction. Personal details will be stored in a database, which can be accessed by potential employers, writes Hemanth Kashyap in this article published in Bangalore Mirror on 9 November 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this article.
- Netizen Report: Transparency Edition — by Prasad Krishna — last modified Nov 09, 2011 04:31 AM
- Global Voices Online has carried a feature story, "Netizen Report: Transparency Edition". We at CIS had filed an RTI application about website blocking. This is reflected in this article by Rebecca MacKinnon which was posted online on 7 November 2011.
- Western Ghats Portal: Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics — by Prasad Krishna — last modified Nov 08, 2011 05:01 AM
- The Western Ghats portal team is organising a one-day workshop to explore the contemporary state on biodiversity informatics on 25 November 2011 at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), Bangalore.
- Material Cyborgs; Asserted Boundaries: Formulating the Cyborg as a Translator — by Nishant Shah — last modified Oct 25, 2015 05:57 AM
- In this peer reviewed article, Nishant Shah explores the possibility of formulating the cyborg as an author or translator who is able to navigate between the different binaries of ‘meat–machine’, ‘digital–physical’, and ‘body–self’, using the abilities and the capabilities learnt in one system in an efficient and effective understanding of the other. The article was published in the European Journal of English Studies, Volume 12, Issue 2, 2008. [1]
- e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities (Russian Version) — by Prasad Krishna — last modified Apr 26, 2012 10:04 AM
- The e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities is based upon the online ITU-G3ict e-Accessibility Policy Toolkit for Persons with Disabilities (www.e-accessibilitytoolkit.org) which was released in February 2010. This is the Russian translation of the same.
- Once Upon A Flash — by Nishant Shah — last modified Dec 14, 2012 10:23 AM
- It was a dark and stormy evening. A young man in a dark blue Adidas jacket, collar turned up, eyes under green-black shades, hopped off a motorbike, tucked his thumbs into the front pockets of his low-slung retro jeans and surreptitiously made his way through a road thronging with rush-hour traffic and irate pedestrians yelping on their cellphones. He skipped across death traps with skilled ease: leaping over potholes, jumping over halfdug trenches, avoiding the occasional pair of doggy jaws that longed to mate with his ankles, ignoring the bikers who were using the pavements as new lanes for driving towards a honking traffic jam bathed in an orange and red neon that made the road look like a piece of burnt toast with dollops of vicious jam on it.
- Blocking online content: Google gets more requests than govt — by Prasad Krishna — last modified Nov 03, 2011 10:45 AM
- Allowing a peek into what kind of information is requested to be blocked online and by who, the Department of Information Technology (DIT), in response to an RTI (Right to Information) query, has provided some intriguing details, says Pallavi Polanki in this article published in Firstpost.com on 2 November 2011.
- Of Jesters, Clowns and Pranksters: YouTube and the Condition of Collaborative Authorship — by Nishant Shah — last modified Dec 14, 2012 10:24 AM
- The idea of a single author creating cinematic objects in a well-controlled scheme of support system and production/distribution infrastructure has been fundamentally challenged by the emergence of digital video sharing sites like YouTube, writes Nishant Shah in this peer reviewed essay published in the Journal of Moving Images, Number 8, December 2009.
- Learn It Yourself — by Prasad Krishna — last modified Dec 23, 2011 05:01 AM
- The peer-to-peer world of online learning encourages conversations and reciprocal learning, writes Nishant Shah in an article published in the Indian Express on 30 October 2011.
- On Fooling Around: Digital Natives and Politics in Asia — by Nishant Shah — last modified May 14, 2015 12:11 PM
- Youths are not only actively participating in the politics of its times but also changing the way in which we understand the political processes of mobilisation, participation and transformation, writes Nishant Shah. The paper was presented at the Digital Cultures in Asia, 2009, at the Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
- CIS Comments on the Draft National Policy on Electronics — by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Nov 01, 2011 12:05 AM
- These were the comments submitted by CIS to the request for comments put out by the Department of Information Technology on its draft 'National Policy on Electronics'.
- India's Statement Proposing UN Committee for Internet-Related Policy — by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Oct 31, 2011 03:28 PM
- This is the statement made by India at the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly, in which its proposal for the UN Committee for Internet-Related Policy was presented.
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