Friday, March 12, 2010

Future plans

Maladets! is alive again, as anyone reading this probably already knows. As if anything witht that name could die...

During the autumn and winter this blog was neglected, and my energy was in stead spent on the Th!nk About it! Climate change competition. It was a great experience, and guess what? I did it well enough to be selected as a blogger also in the next round, where the topic will be "The developing world".

As you have seen, I have started writing about developing issues also on maladets!, mostly as a way to get to know the subject. I plan to continue posting on maladets!, also after the competition starts. Everything worth reading will be found here, and the best pieces also on the competition site.

In addition, I have a little project trying to get my fingers dirty with HTML from scratch.... everything I ever write is supposed to end up on the Maladets! homepage, but this will also be the place where I test my programming skills. At the moment they are... basic.

As you migh also have noticed, Maladets! has been redesigned. I was experimenting with different customized templates, but in the end I settled for a Blogger template. One reason is that I like it, and that it meets my main requirement - simplicity. I could probably find a nice custom template, but what I couldn't make work was the like/unlike buttons under the posts. I really like them, as a way for readers to give input without commenting. Feel free to use them!

The side bar has been dedicated to sharing and following gadgets... somehow this is the essence of the internet I think, and since I love to tweet what I read myself, I want to make it easy to share the maldets! posts.



Last but not least... in the side bar you will find a banner for the Reporters without Borders (RSF)  yearly World Day Against Cyber Censorship , which is today, March 12th. It is late to put up the banner, but I am a strong supporter of their cause.

There are many threats to free speech on the internet today, The obvious one's, that must not be beglected are despotic regimes, like the ex-government of Moldova, the Chinese and the Iranian government. There are countries where blogging is dangerous, but people still write. All of us benefit from these bloggers' writings, but they alone carry the risks. The least we can do is to show solidarity.

But Reporters without Borders' vision of "a single Internet that is unrestricted and accessible to all". Is threated also from commercial interests. The fact that not all youtube videos can be seen in all countries, is one frustrating example. Governments and NGO's all over the world work hard to give their citizens acces to the internet. If information is not free on the internet, than these efforts are all in vain.

Read more about the World Day Against Cyber Censorship on Global Voices Online, a fantastic example of what the internet can be.

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