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.

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 special correspondent Michael Greenspan and producers Yuval Lion and Ara Ayer report from Israel.

Could Agassi’s plan work in larger countries like the U.S.? Watch an extended interview: Debate on the electric revolution of the auto industry.

The One Laptop Per Child program (OLPC) launched in Rwanda in October with the aim of providing computer access to the country’s 2.3 million schoolchildren. President Paul Kagame has supported the program and efforts to expand schooling and educational resources in the country.

Worldfocus correspondent Martin Seemungal travels to Rwamagana, Rwanda — once a site of the country’s 1994 genocide, now the site of technological transformation.

Below, read what bloggers are saying about the laptop initiative from Rwanda to Peru.

Blogger “Brian,” an OLPC intern, posts his account of bringing laptops to children in Kigali, Rwanda.

Blogger “DSD” — another OLPC intern — writes from Ethiopia, describing how the laptops excite children in the country’s bare schools.

From Peru, blogger “Ivan Krstić” returns to the town of Arahuay one year after OLPC brought laptops to children there, writing that despite his skepticism, the program has brought about real change.

However, some bloggers express continued doubts about the OLPC program’s effectiveness.

The “Hyper Edge” blog argues that money could be better spent on food and infrastructure projects.

The “Thoughts on Freedom” blog writes from Australia that the program is flawed, as it does not take into account long-term maintenance costs and more pressing needs in rural communities.

The price of the so-called “$100 laptop” has in fact grown to over $188 in past years, though OLPC plans to introduce a newly-designed laptop at a cheaper price by 2010.

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.