A conversation between two leading authorities about how governments are using the internet and ICTs to advance their political agendas and policies.

Interesting post about SPAM and keeping it under control in twitter. Particularly pertinent is the point that as a site/community becomes larger the more SPAM there is - ie, the larger the population, the harder the governance.

Blog Post 1

A tongue in cheek blog post that nevertheless addresses some real issues at stake when it comes to people's behaviour in many online communities.

How do you govern a site specially designed to encourage bad behaviour? Do you even want or need to? When does 'bad behaviour' go too far?

This article argues that reputation - such as in Apple's iPad - can be more important than need and functionality when it comes to technology. The phenomena of 'the fad' is not new, but is especially relevant with technological products and innovation. It will be interesting to see whether items such as the iPad do fill gaps in a market or are simply fad toys. The iPad's claimed 'killer function' - that of reading and subscriptions - will prove interesting when we look at how the publishing industry repsponds and whether standards much develop for newspapers/books/magazines.

This article discusses how online review sites can be manipulated, and the importance that companies place on 'word of mouth' for reputation. It raises this important issue: online reviews and comments are crucial for the reputation of 'real world' sites, so how can these sites be 'governed'? Or should they be?

I found this article and its links really interesting - it discusses the fusion of the city and technology, and uses the concept of ubiquitous technology/urban informatics to explain and describe 'smart cities'. Also, it raises the idea of the 'searchable city' and that cities need to be considered on earily they are searchable. This raises the issue of reputation - which is referred to here: not only consumable items being reviewed by the citizenry and available on iphone apps, but also traffic routes, places to live etc.

What does it mean for both your privacy and personal reputation if you are putting everything online? If governments/corporations/employers etc can access so much personal information about you, how will this affect your life and the 'control' that such organisations have?

I found this article interesting as it gives a good description of user control and encouragement - a form of governance - through site architecture. Particularly interesting was the discussion around how changing one button's position increased that button's clicks by 10%.

This article discusses the potential problems managing your reputation and identity online when a person (known or unknown) decides to attack you. As the article reads: "The proliferation of blogs and Web sites can allow angry clients, jealous lovers or ruthless competitors to define a person's identity. Whether true or not, their words can have far-reaching effects" The question to ask is - how do we stop this from happening, and manage it when it does?

How mobiles are helping bridge the digital divide

Whilst not strictly about reputation, this post discusses tracking what your (your being a person or entity) fans are also fans of. This tells us alot about identity and reputation within different communities, and helps to track coalitions of interest and identity.

Australian defamation law and how it applies to the Internet

Wikipedia is one of the most used sites on the site, and a 'go to' for infomation. But what happens when the site is about - or mentions - a real, living person? There are many cases of anpeople suffering damages to their reputation - particularly politicians - due to misleading, false or slanderous Wikipedia entries. This invention hopes to remedy that and show that you can't trust everything you read online. This also helps regulate some of the pitfalls of collaboration, and encourages the less-than-excellent collaborations to improve. Exposure of false collaboration can damage the reputation of the collaborators, and encourage them to improve.

This discusses companies such as 'Reputation Hawk' which focus on improving your online reputation - particularly pertaining to your personal identity. It highlights how important your reputation is online - in many ways it is the only social currency that you have.

A media rights watchdog has listed Australia in a report on countries that pose a threat of internet censorship.

The Internet Industry Association is working with Police and Government to try and control safety concerns on social media sites. Currently, they are powerless to step in when sites are hosted overseas.

55 000 submissions have been received under the Australian Government's review on the introduction of an R18+ rating for games in Australia.