Iran

You may remember Anonymous from their campaign to shut down the Church of Scientology.  Now they are teaming up with The Pirate Bay to provide "a secure and reliable way of communication for Iranians and friends."  The site is called Anonymous Iran (http://iran.whyweprotest.net/).

Right on the front page is a link (http://torir.org/) to instructions on using Tor for safer anonymous browsing.

A blog linked to on Slashdot uses the word "netwar" to describe what is happening online (mostly over Twitter) in Iran right now.  The blog entry on journal squared discusses the development of netwar from its beginnings with the Zapatistas in '94 and the shutting down of the WTO negotiation meetings in Seattle in '99.  It's not very long, but the author has some interesting insights.

The blog entry also touches briefly on why Twitter is so hard for the Iranian government to block.  It comes down to this: not only does Twitter work from its website, it also works with text messaging on cell phones.  And what really makes Twitter so flexible is its API.  Twitter's Application Programming Interface, or API, lets third party sites and applications become part of the Twitter ecosystem.  Using Twitter's API, Iranians have made Twitter's features available elsewhere when the official site is blocked by the government.

API's are an incredible tool for allowing community driven flexibility, innovation and openness.  read more »

As I write this entry, many Iranian citizens are showing solidarity with one another in the form of mass protests/demonstrations and riots.

This is in response to the results of a rigged election. 

Pictures accompanied with a small synopsis can be found here.

Communication from Tehran has been clamped down, so many Iranian citizens are blogging their viewpoints through outlets such as Twitter.  read more »