"The good thing about a blog is that it can be anonymous and you still can be contacted," says Gary Kawaguchi, a digital media trainer at Royal University of Phnom Penh, Department of Media and Communications.
Earlier this week, I wrote about the BBC's decision to pull a planned Hardtalk interview with Raja Petra Kamarudin, a controversial Malaysian blogger, because of legal advice. The decision has been heavily criticised on independent Malaysian blogs and news websites with many accusing the British state broadcaster of caving in to pressure from the Malaysian government.
Malaysian prosecutors charged a newspaper editor Thursday with publishing false information in a satirical blog post that poked fun at the national electricity company. Irwan Abdul Rahman, editor of the Malay Mail newspaper's lifestyle section, pleaded innocent in a district court near Kuala Lumpur to a charge of transmitting content that is "obscene, indecent, false, menacing or offensive in character with malicious intent," said the newspaper's editor, Ahirudin Attan.
The question in the minds of many non-Filipino Tweeps across the world is this: Why is "Merry Christmas" trending today Sept. 1, 2010? For the benefit of Twitter users worldwide, blogger Bong Ong tweeted the answer.
The BBC's Hardtalk programme has dropped a planned interview with Raja Petra Kamarudin, a leading Malaysian blogger who fled to the UK, following advice from the broadcaster's lawyers.
I really liked this piece from Sabrina Tavernise. That's not to say I agree with everything in the article - I definitely don't share its sympathetic tone toward Jamshed Dasti - but that's neither here nor there. The point is, it's exactly the type of article I love to read from foreign correspondents writing on Pakistan. The article's basic premise is that Pakistan is becoming more urbanized, especially in Punjab, and as a direct consequence, the power of landed feudal interests is declining. You really should read the whole thing.
Buoyed with its success with BlackBerry, the Indian government is taking it up a notch. It will be issuing notices to Google, Skype and VPN to comply with its guidelines. These companies have to give access to their servers to law enforcement agencies. Or else they would face a ban.
Members of various Philippines media organizations called on the media community to evaluate their coverage of the Aug. 23 hostage crisis and to come up with a set of guidelines to be used during crisis situations.
North Korea lashed out at South Korea for blocking its Twitter and YouTube accounts, saying the move proves Seoul opposes improving inter-Korean relations. The North's government said this month it had joined Twitter and YouTube in what was seen as an effort to bolster its propaganda warfare against South Korea and the U.S. Seoul officials quickly responded by blocking both accounts from being accessed in the South, saying they contain illegal information banned under the South's security law.
A week is a long time in politics, as they say, but in this internet-centric age, a week in the the web can be even longer. To keep up with what's happening in Asia, every Monday I recap my pick of Asia's key tech/digital news and articles from the previous week, while also including a round-up of the week's posts from this blog too.
Twitter has taken a while to establish itself in Thailand but this year has finally seen the service make a big splash in the country, alongside Facebook, thanks mainly to the role social networking and other new media services in the reporting of the Red Shirt protests in Bangkok earlier this year.
New Media
