Twitterpated

This is by way of Abject Learning. Someone needs to explain this to me: Twitter.

Wikipedia describes it as "a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send ... text-based posts, up to 140 characters long." It's like a minimalist chat room, but with thousands posting all at once. It's very strange. It's very large. And I may be the last person on the internet to know about it.

What do you do with this? What can you do with this? I'm puzzled and intrigued and would love to hear from folks who are using this for academic purposes or for any purpose for that matter. Please. Explain it to me.

Great Firewall of China

This link comes by way of Abject Learning. Clicking on the picture above takes you to greatfirewallofchina.org a site that let's you check to see if any particular web site is blocked in China or not.

Evidently, my own writings constitute a threat to this global superpower. Cool. This also probably explains why my site meter hasn't clicked over past the one billion mark yet.

You can read more about China's efforts to restrict internet access and about the various circumvention technologies available in this also banned article from Wikipedia.