cyber war

A three-week wave of massive cyber-attacks on the small Baltic country of Estonia, the first known incidence of such an assault on a state, is causing alarm across the western alliance, with Nato urgently examining the offensive and its implications. [The Guardian]

According to The Guardian, “Alarm over the unprecedented scale of cyber-warfare is to be raised tomorrow at a summit between Russian and European leaders outside Samara on the Volga.” If the Russians are proven to be behind the attacks, the Guardian says this would be considered the first officially known attack by a state on another.

Not really. In fact in the Frontline film Cyberwars, one Pentagon official acknowledges that the US conducted a cyberwar attack on Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1992. In addition, cyberwars have been very common between Israel and the Palestinians. In particular, Israel as a State, and Palestinians as individual computer-savvy people.

the twitter phenomenon

Does anyone remember FlashMob? It was just another crazy Internet phenomenon where a group of people who did not know each other met in a predetermined public place, did something unusual and then disappeared. They connected only through the Internet. Flashmobbing still exists [link], but I am not sure how many people out there still do it.

twitter.pngAnd now there is the Twitter phenomenon. I call it a phenomenon because it really makes no sense whatsoever. Twitter is “a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?” Everybody from all over the world responds to that single question. You do not write an essay, you do not write a paragraph; you only write one sentence that describes what you are doing right this minute.

Here is one answer:

Run out of tobacco, but can’t be bothered to go out in the wind and rain to get some more, could today be the day I stop smoking?

And here is another:

Moderate takes reins as France’s PM: French President Nicolas Sarkozy named a consensual, reform

The site keeps updating of course every second as people from all over the world keep posting what they are doing.

The creators of Twitter are a group called Obvious from California. They claim they like to create “interesting things that matter to the world”.

Matter to the world? Maybe. Perhaps there is something I am missing.

A few weeks ago NPR had a segment about Twitter on its program On Point:

Non-stop, instant communication from anywhere, all the time. Hyper-connectivity, always present, in a non-stop global mind-share of twittering micro-thoughts.

You may listen to the program here as its founders explain what they wanted out of Twitter. And here is the link to the Twitter pheonomenon.

are you sphered yet?

shere.gifSphere is one of the new Internet gadgets that allows you to provide related links on a specific topic on your site. When a visitor moves his/her mouse over a link on your site, a widget pops open with links related to that particular topic.

The Sphere Related Content Widget connects with an icon link at the end of your blog posts. When a reader clicks on the icon link, we find blog and media articles related to your blog posts…The Sphere Related Content plug-in works best on topics that are being actively discussed in the blogosphere and news media.

There is also a Mac widget for the Mac dashboard.

So go ahead, get sphered http://www.sphere.com/tools#getsphered