A Taiwanese gamer playing Happy Farm on Facebook. Photo: Flickr user copycatko

Hsin-Yin Lee, a former associate producer at Worldfocus, is a news editor at the “China Times” in Taipei.  She writes about the current Taiwanese obsession with a Facebook game.

“Happy Farm,” a six-month-old Facebook application, has spawned millions of cyber farmers across the island. According to the game developer, Taiwanese fans constitute up to 80 percent of the 3.7 million members of “Happy Farm.” Thanks to its popularity, Facebook’s reach rate in August was up 60 percent from July, which helped Taiwan post the highest growth in new Facebook members worldwide during September.

The rule of “Happy Farm” is quite simple: You come, you seed, you conquer. Each virtual farmer is allowed to set up farms, grow crops and raise livestock in a fiercely competitive environment. Points are won not only by one’s hard work but also his craft in stealing from friends when they are offline.

However, not everyone is happy with “Happy Farm.” Taiwanese premier Wu Den-yih recently had to step in to discourage people–especially civil servants–from playing it.

Wu’s comment came after several server shut-downs at local police stations because too many police were playing the game at work. The authority also worried that “crop-stealing” might hurt the image of the police.

The Happy Farm craze has set Taiwanese society in circus. In private companies, managers have issued statements to make clear that “harvesting in an air-conditioned room is immoral.” Some restaurants have even been renovated to resemble the “Happy Farm” interface to attract customers!

Students are complaining that too much work has made them unable to wake up in the middle of night to guard their crops; even drug dealers have been seen using the game to contact customers and establish new networks.

Experts say that overuse of Happy Farm didn’t come out of thin air, though. Taiwanese people are generally overworked, and it is the fatigue generated by heavy workload, experts argue, that leaves people no choice but to get connected through the Internet as much as possible.

According to the 2008 World Competitiveness Yearbook published by the Lausanne-based business school IMD, Taiwan’s working hours were ranked as the fifth-longest in the world - behind Mexico, Hong Kong, South Korea and India.

Since each Taiwanese employee has to work an average of 2,256 hours a year, experts said “Happy Farm” provides an ideal environment for self-indulgence at work. While taking care of your own farm brings contentment, getting a taste of humanity by stealing crops somehow eases the feeling of isolation.

Now, pardon me for ending my article here. I really need to get back to my farm to collect some pumpkins.

In this extended interview — recorded in May, prior to the crackdown following the disputed election — Iranian students discuss how they bypass filters to find music and films, both online and in shops on the streets. They also share their ambivalence about the prevalence of Western popular culture in Iran.

It’s a game of cat and mouse between China and its Internet users.

In another chapter of the story about how well Beijing is managing to manage Internet use in China, regulations issued yesterday require computers sold there to come with a program that blocks access to porn sites (no version is available for Linux or Macs so far). Though it’s targeted at porn — and, as a mother, I can imagine wanting this software myself one day — the concern is that “Green Dam” will be used for other sites also and may serve as a Trojan Horse for the authorities. At the moment, I have it on good authority that computers don’t have to come installed with this program. It can be shipped on a CD and the user can easily toss the CD into the circular file.

If Green Dam ends up being used for political sites, I have confidence that any one intrepid netizen will still be able to figure out how to circumvent it and the myriad other blocks the authorities put between him and information about Tibet, Taiwan and other “sensitive” issues, if he really wants to. The thing is, most are not so determined, and a highly complex and layered system of censorship ensures that no casual user will ever bump into such information by accident. Still, in this ongoing game of cat and mouse, I will always bet on the mice.

- Nina Hachigian

Estonian Internet guru Linnar Viik explains Estonia’s quick technological development and shares lessons learned from 2007’s massive cyber-attack.

Google’s Lok Sabha Election Center

The Australian government announced plans to build a 43 billion dollar Internet network to bring broadband access to 90 percent of the country. The development will be administered by a publicly-owned company providing 37,000 jobs.

Blogger Sam Varghese of “iTWire” responded to the news with skepticism, writing:

I’d be really happy if some company or group could build something that just doubles the 6 to 8 Mbps that I get at the moment. Provided it happens in my lifetime.

I don’t mind if North Korea can provide it. Or even Iran. I’d just like to use something that works at a decent speed before I die.

Talk of decent broadband in this country is beginning to resemble talk about the unicorn.

Another country making headlines for its Internet use is India, where Google India predicts rapid growth this year, citing 50 percent growth in 2008 in a country traditionally known for its low Internet use.

Google is not only studying but also feeding India’s online interaction as the country’s general election approaches, with its Lok Sbha Election Center information portal. Gaurav Mishra writes for his “Guaravonomics Blog“about Internet technologies in India’s elections:

The Indian National Congress seems to be stuck in the web 1.0 era. Both the official Congress website and the Congress Media websites are online brochures. The Vote for Congress portal, which was supposed to revolutionize its online campaign by providing the Congress candidates a platform to blog (Hindu/ TOI), is still not up. None of the senior Congress leaders — Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Manmohan Singh — have a website and, what’s worse, their URLs are owned by cyber-squatters (Indian Express). The party does want to set up 600 internet kiosks across the country (Hindu) but without engaging interactive content, their effectiveness might be limited.

Shashi Tharoor — author and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations — is perhaps the only Congress candidate to seriously leverage the web in his campaign, with presence on Facebook and Orkut (CIOL/ Sify). Former Karnataka chief minister SM Krishna has a Twitter profile. Some of the younger Congress candidates like Priya Dutt, Milind Deora (Facebook) and Sachin Pilot also have well-designed websites, but aren’t really active on social media (Hindu). Some regional Congress leaders, like Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, also have a respectable presence on the web (Hindu/ Exchange4Media/ Indian Express).

China already has Internet traffic to match its population, and a January Economist article showed it passing the U.S. in Internet use. Andy of the “Saving to Invest” blog writes about the importance of considering international traffic and catering to a global audience: 

In time as the world adopts e-commerce at a consumer level the “value” of a transaction is likely to increase overseas much faster than it will locally. Which means that you need to ensure your online business model factors in this new audience and potential revenue source. In time, I have a feeling that the most successful online businesses (and blogs) will be the ones that appeal to a global audience and not just a local one.

Theresa of “Lives of Wander” writes about her difficulties finding an Internet connection in South Africa and other African countries, nowhere near as connected as the countries she and commenters visited in South and Central America:

Unfortunately, however, Internet here is not the God-given right that many of us have come to expect. We’ve had Internet access in about half the places we’ve stayed. Or at least we have access to a computer that is supposedly connected to the Internet. Most of the time the computer is so old and so slow, that it’s a miracle if it connects. If it does connect, getting any page to load can take ages. And the kicker here is that you’re paying for it. Internet is not only not ubiquitous, it’s also not free. So while I’m waiting 20 minutes for my Gmail to load, I’m paying for each of those 20 minutes. And it’s not even cheap either, costing $4 or more per hour. So if you haven’t heard from us lately, if you haven’t gotten emails or comments on your blog or a Skype call, you know why. Sorry.

Commenter Audrey writes about similar troubles in Central Asia and how technologies like Twitter can circumvent both censorship and obscenely slow lines:

We started using Twitter in this part of the world to let our family and friends know we were OK and to give them a little taste of what’s going on (in 140 characters or less). The interface is rather simple, so it comes up much quicker than having to go through a blog editor. Also, we found that government censors in highly controlled countries (eg, Burma, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) hadn’t been turned onto Twitter yet, so it was usually open when other communication channels had been blocked. If internet continues to be difficult, Twitter might be an alternative to get a quick message out.

Internet connectivity proves an ongoing problem across the African continent outside of big cities, but Africa is included in Google’s long list of development sites, and the Google Africa blog traces the company’s efforts across the continent.

In Sweden, connectivity is not the problem, but rather what people choose to do with their Internet connections. Sweden launced aggressive anti-piracy campaigns with the adoption of a new law allowing copyright holders to take names of users from ISPs. The day the law went into effect, Swedish Internet traffic reportedly dropped 40 percent. Techdirt’s “keep-whac’ing-that-mole department” speculates on the boost this gives to encryptors while really commenting on the misguided infeasibility of these aggressive practices.

With Sweden’s new antipiracy law in effect, it seems that one industry is getting a nice boost: apparently there’s a lot of new interest in encrypting your internet traffic, and services that provide encrypted VPN services are getting lots of new business. This, once again, points out that near total pointlessness in playing Whac-A-Mole over file sharing. It just become an endless game where each side continues to elevate itself, and it makes it that much more difficult in the end for the entertainment industry to do what it will inevitably be forced to do anyway: start building business models that embrace file sharing. But the further they push users of such services underground, the more and more difficult they’ll find it to embrace these services down the road. Each attempt to knock out these services or their users only comes around to backfire on the industry itself.

Meanwhile, South Korea continues to inspire envy in Web users around the globe.

As Worldfocus correspondent Daljit Dhaliwal and producers Sally Garner and Ara Ayer report, Estonia is quickly becoming E-stonia.

Watch an extended interview: Estonia’s Internet guru Linnar Viik shares cyber strategy.

Officials called the footage “lies,” adding that the government is not afraid of the Internet.

Watch the video in question below (warning: violence):

Worldfocus associate producer Hsin-Yin Lee translated comments from popular Chinese Web portal, “Sohu,” in which anonymous Chinese Internet users react to the YouTube block:

Commenter 1: I hope that YouTube could be back to normal very soon. It’s an important access for me to know different cultures. It helps me a lot on my job by downloading educational materials.

Commenter 2: Let’s get those trashy Western Web sites out of China! We have more than 10 popular video sharing Web sites and it will keep growing!

Commenter 3: Is the government really not afraid of the Internet? If not, why doesn’t it allow different voices to speak online? Monitoring is necessary, but over-monitoring will impair the freedom of speech.

Global Voices Advocacy suggests methods to get around the blockade.

Stan Schroeder of “Mashable” questions the effectiveness of such bans:

Normally, the video would probably be noticed by a handful of people interested in the matter; this way, everyone has seen it (or heard of it). one has to wonder how effective these bans are, since tools like Twitter make it incredibly easy for people to spread the news about incidents like this one. Proving that a video is fake would probably be a much better tactic than banning a site viewed by millions of people every day, and then claiming you’re not afraid of the Internet; it just doesn’t hold water.

A blogger at “Marketing Shift” writes that beyond free speech issues, the continued bans may end up hurting prospects for China’s smartphone market:

China’s receiving widespread criticism for its oppresion of free speech, but we should also consider the implications for tech corporations and developers.

Imagine yourself as the CEO of a Tech company who wants to tap into China’s expanding 3G market , but why bother wasting your [research and development] on a nation that may block user access to you for any reason, at any time? In my opinion, China’s erratic behavior could overshadow the potential market of 700 million new mobile users.

Read  more about Internet censorship around the globe: Blog censorship silences free speech around the world.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user keso under a Creative Commons license.

Flickr user mallix constructs a Twitter class portrait. Photo under a Creative Commons license.

A draft curriculum review of the British education system calls for primary school pupils to learn how to use Twitter, Wikipedia, blogging and podcasts as part of their school studies.

The proposals also suggest that history topics such as the Victorian era and World War II be given less time in the curriculum. The final version of the review is due out next month.

“The Cowfield” blog rejects the curriculum shake-ups, arguing that technology is over-emphasized:

As a history scholar, I firmly believe more should be done to encourage people to question their pasts, and to connect the present with what has gone on before. The suggestions [in the proposals] indicate that this is no longer a concern for governmental officials. Instead, it seems, we should be encouraging the ‘life skills’ of how to use Twitter, or how to blog.

[...]I really do not think that further use of Twitter, Wikipedia et al should be encouraged. Many people are already moaning that there is too much exposure to the internet and computers, so surely encouraging further exposure should be frowned upon? At a period where we are frequently told of the growing obesity problem, surely placing kids in front of another screen cannot help? I’m still not sure what was wrong with classrooms and books personally.

Several commenters weighed in on the story in response to an article at the “TechCrunch” blog, both in support of and against the proposals:

Wendy wrote: We’re in a post PC era, my four year old uses youtube on my iphone, my 18mth old daughter plays with the bubblewrap app. To them it’s just part of life and nothing special. I’m all in favour of an overhaul to schools curriculum with regards to tech and media however I’m a little skeptical that putting Twitter on the agenda is just the government jumping on a fad. More optimistically they’re just mentioning this to get picked up on the news and there is a more considered well researched programme of change behind this?

Bas wrote: I think children should get lessons in thinking and in information retrieval. Yes, they should still be taught about history, etc. Yes, it’s important they learn stuff that they could need ‘on the spot’ - like calculating skills. However, we can go a little bit easier on drilling the information in - by the time they’re 25, augmented reality will be a fact and not even a luxury. We’ll be able to retrieve information at any time, any place, about almost anything, without even moving our hands to grab our handhelds.

Another British blogger at “Zeitgeist” says it’s “more dumbing down,” blasting the government:

I think the those people in authority are the ones who need educating. Children already know far more about the web than most adults! What is going on? Why does the government continuously insist on getting it wrong? Because getting it right would cost a lot more money, and it would probably take a lot longer than 4 years, and as most people realise the government only see[s] up to 4 years in to the future, they never think long-term.

At the “Twitterati” blog, Josh Crowse comments that the introduction of social media tools into curriculum may have a reverse effect:

Translation: in 10 years, students will have grown to hate twitter and wikipedia, after having to use them as part of daily homework.

Some American schools ban Twitter, including that of Minnesota teacher “Knaus,” who writes in support of the site as a learning tool:

I love Twitter. I use it three ways. I have a Twitter for my classroom that is private, a Twitter for my family that is connected to Facebook, and a school tech Twitter for my teaching and learning in and through technology. Having different Twitters lets me keep my information specific to each topic and I can’t “over Tweet.” I really wish it was unblocked at my school. I think it would be great for my students to use.

Monks head online in Phnom Penh.

Several decades ago under the communist Khmer Rouge, Cambodia was isolated and cut off from much of the outside world. While the Internet has since expanded the range of global communication, most Cambodians still lack Internet access — only about 70,000 people are online.

Tharum Bun is the information technology manager at The Asia Foundation in Cambodia and writes at the “In Asia” blog that while Internet access may be scarce, those who have embraced the Web — including a former king — have used blogs to engage in dynamic and open dialogue.

Cambodians Embrace Online Dialogue

Cambodia has over 13 million people, but currently, less than 2 percent have regular access to the Internet. Cambodia’s official language is Khmer, but these Cambodians who chat, e-mail, and blog on the Internet – and the approximately 23 percent of Cambodians who text with their mobile phones – find it easier to use English. While low Internet penetration, language barriers, and technical issues with using the Khmer scripts limit the amount of Cambodians who can engage in online dialogue, those Cambodians who are entering the international blogosphere are breaking a pattern of devastating silence and isolation.

The former King (or King Father), Norodom Sihanouk, now 86, makes regular postings about Cambodia’s past and present on his website. The former Prince – fluent in Khmer, French, and English – posts communiqués and reactions to media reports regularly. Originally launched in 2002, the King’s website became a new digital medium for global visitors. Cambodian media largely use their websites as a source for information, taking the King’s comments and those of his critics, and translating them into Khmer. The King’s online conversation and personal digital medium is inspiring young Cambodians to engage the Internet as a forum for discussion and debate, and to learn English as a second language.

After the Khmer Rouge fell in the 1980s, Cambodia experienced a big baby boom; today 60 percent of the population qualifies as youth. Because of their English language skills and affinity for technology, Cambodian youth make up the largest number of Internet users in the country and are, like the King, engaging in online debate. This group of active Internet users writes mostly in English, given both the technical difficulties of inputting Khmer characters, as well as the widespread use of English among their audience: their own peers and the international online community.

This dynamic online dialogue has helped pave the way for a more open discussion in a country torn by civil wars in recent decades. The trauma inflicted by the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979) is still a major point of discussion in Cambodia. Cambodian intellectuals, who were once the target of mass killings, and their surviving children, use their knowledge of the English language and technology to express their opinions and views. To move Cambodia past years of silence, this is essential. The King has used his website to post his thoughts on social order and past politics, encouraging today’s Cambodian youth to use online forums, chat rooms, and blogs to discuss issues from everyday life to larger, social issues.

While this new emergence of online voices, in a language other than their own, doesn’t necessarily reflect the progressive thinking of the entire nation, it is a starting point of voiced, diversified opinions.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Magalie L’Abbé under a Creative Commons license.

Worldfocus correspondent Martin Seemungal and producer Yuval Lion report on Africa’s technological advances.

And despite Africa’s limited access to the Internet, bloggers are weighing in on the role of technology around Africa.

The “Geek2Live” blog writes about efforts to speed up Africa’s connection to the World Wide Web.

The “White African” blog discusses why African technology matters, including why Africa is a great place to test technology and gain a competitive edge in world markets.

“ReadWriteWeb” recently completed a three-part series on social media in Africa: an introduction to the African web community, mobile innovations in the continent and the effect of more democratic media on Africa’s social and political landscape (including its role in Zimbabwean elections).

The “AfriGadget” blog cites examples of African ingenuity and invention, including a phone-based security system designed by an 18-year-old Kenyan. “Startup Africa” also provides resources for African entrepreneurs.

YouTube user “bahiaboy” posts a video about the Internet trading platform TradeNet, which provides African farmers with price updates and purchase offers over cell phones, with testimonies from both rural Africans and the platform’s developers.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Esthr under a Creative Commons license.