Human rights group Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres, or RSF) today announced its list of 13 worst “enemies of the Internet.”

The list consists of countries that RSF believes are suppressing freedom of expression on the internet. For the first time, Egypt has been added to the list while former “enemies” Nepal, Libya and the Maldives have all been removed.
Egypt is cited for its attitude to bloggers rather than specific web censorship, said a spokesman for the RSF.

“Three bloggers have been arrested and detained this year for speaking out in favour of democratic reform. This is an appeal to the Egyptian government to change its position,” said the spokesman.

The civil liberties pressure group has organised a 24-hour protest, inviting web users to vote for the worst offending countries. In New York, mobile billboards drove around the streets of the city displaying large posters of a map of the world highlighting the Internet’s black holes.

In Paris, Reporters Without Borders projected a gigantic world map of online censorship onto the city‚Äôs monuments. The press and passers-by saw the map projected onto the facade of Saint-Lazare station, onto the building that houses the French headquarters of Yahoo!, and onto the Bastille Opera. The organizers’ aim was to encourage the public to get involved in the fight to defend the right to online free expression. Reporters Without Borders activists distributed leaflets explaining the 24-hour online protest against censorship.

Visitors to the RSF website are also invited to leave a voice message for Yahoo’s co-founder Jerry Yang, expressing their views on the firm’s involvement in China.

RSF has been outspoken in its condemnation of Yahoo. The search engine has been criticised along with other companies for helping the Chinese authorities block access to some online material.

IQMax has announced that it is working with Microsoft Corporation and Verizon Wireless to deliver enterprise podcasting through its IQChannels collaborative rich media application.

IQChannels, powered by IQMax’s enterprise mobile platform, lets rich media content (voice, video, images, text, etc.) to be distributed to employees on their mobile devices in a secure, managed environment. Content that can be delivered include company announcements, internal sales and training programs, sales and customer support content and any other information an organization wants to deliver to mobile end users.

The application is an end to end Microsoft solution that runs on Smartphones and Pocket PC devices utilizing Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5.0 and Windows Media Player.

Intel Corporation announced at the Web 2.0 Conference today that it is collaborating with several software companies on the launch of SuiteTwo, a set of business software applications.

The integrated suite is being billed as “a family of interconnected services combined to improve productivity and enable high-engagement marketing,” comprised of applications from software companies including Six Apart (Movable Type blogging software – founder Mena Trott pictured, right), Socialtext, NewsGator, SimpleFeed and SpikeSource.

Intel officials see the SuiteTwo launch representing “a fundamental shift toward open, flexible and participatory computing models,” encouraging internal collaboration and external, high-engagement marketing. It includes Web applications that include blogging, RSS, search and Wiki capabilities in a single, fully integrated suite (PC only, no Mac version). All services are integrated with a single sign-on and rich user interface. Future releases of SuiteTwo will include podcasting, business networking, mobility and other features, according Intel. Initially, the software suite will be offered in English and Japanese.

The suite will run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Microsoft Windows.

While Microsoft’s soon-to-be-released Zune portable media player has generated a lot more hype, it looks like the Xbox 360 may prove to be an even bigger threat to Apple’s iPod/iTunes juggernaut. The move promises to put digital video downloads where people want them most – on their TV’s.

Microsoft today announced agreements with CBS, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, Turner Broadcasting System Inc. (TBS Inc.), Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment to bring an initial lineup of over 1,000 hours of TV shows and movies to Xbox 360 gamers in the U.S. by the end of the year. Xbox 360 will be the first gaming console to bring standard and high-definition TV shows and movies via digital distribution over the Internet.

Microsoft’s announcement could prove to be more significant for digital video than the much-hyped Zune. However, Microsoft makes no mention of the platform being open for independent content delivery.

Time has recognized YouTube as the Best Invention of the Year for 2006:

Meet Peter. Peter is a 79-year-old English retiree. Back in WW II he served as a radar technician. He is now an international star.

One year ago, this would not have been possible, but the world has changed. In the past 12 months, thousands of ordinary people have become famous. Famous people have been embarrassed. Huge sums of money have changed hands. Lots and lots of Mentos have been dropped into Diet Coke. The rules are different now, and one website changed them: YouTube.

Its been an interesting year in technology. Nintendo invented a video game you control with a magic wand. A new kind of car traveled 3,145 miles on a single gallon of gas. A robot learned to ride a bike. Somebody came up with a nanofabric umbrella that doesnt stay wet. But only YouTube created a new way for millions of people to entertain, educate, shock, rock and grok one another on a scale weve never seen before. Thats why its Times Invention of the Year for 2006.

“You have the right to choose – you have the right to vote” – Paul Van Dyk

9 Ways To Cover The Election

MobileCasting Update: Veek The Vote

The first PodCamp on the West coast will be held in San Francisco on November 18-19, 2006 at the historic Swedish American Hall. PodCampWest is free to attend for the community and is inspired by PodCamp Boston.

Event organizer Vic Podcaster reports that PodCampWest aims to “bring together the movers and shakers of New Media, giving you free access to ideas, thoughts, best practices, and the true ‘understanding of New Media scene’.”

Vic is expecting upwards of 300 “plugged-in Podcasters and Vloggers” at PodCampWest.

PodCampWest is an unconference, for podcasters & listeners, video bloggers, hobbyists and people interested in new media. The event organizers stress that one need not be a podcaster in order to attend and/or enjoy the weekend. The sessions are held in the Open Space format: the attendees at the two-day conference jointly set the agenda, lead the breakout sessions, and take an active role in moving each session along, “igniting” group conversations.

Ricky Spero at The Mac Observer’s Weekly Roundup podcast tells Podcasting News that they have begun a regular feature where they try out different podcast hardware. Starting with popular podcasting microphones, they’ll eventually work their way through a whole host of recording equipment.

How will it work? “Each week, we’re looking at a different podcasting microphone; we record the show with it, talk about the mic briefly, then switch to a different mic on the following show,” Spero says.

They explain the series on the October 21 episode. The feed for the whole Weekly Roundup series is here.

iDisguise has introduced two new anti-theft cases for iPod nanos that are designed to look like mint candy tins. The cases are meant to be used when an iPod is stored away and not being used.

The stealthy cases face competition from Altoids tins, which some mint-lovers have converted to use as curiously strong iPod nano cases:

The two iDisguise cases currently available are made to fit the first and second generation iPod Nano, but can also be used to conceal a first or second generation iPod shuffle.

The cases are 4” x 2” x 1” and retail for $10.95. Additional cases are in development that will suit other iPod models.

New Assignment’s David Cohn has suggested 9 ways you can blog, vlog or podcast about tomorrow’s elections:

• At Betsy Devine‚Äôs blog you can learn more about ‚Äúsnapping the leaflets,‚Äù a project to document what propaganda voters are subject to days before the election.
• Video The Vote is an organized effort, using camera phones and video, to cover any mishaps voters encounter this Tuesday.
• VoterStory.org has a blog widget that will transmit questionable incidents at the polls to voter protection organizations that will be standing by to intervene and give advice. (Note: Some suspicions have been raised about Voter Story‚Äôs legitimacy.)
• Congresspedia has a collective effort to profile the challenging candidates who have a decent shot at winning a seat in the 110th Congress.
• Veek the Vote lets Americans collect and share their voting experience through photo or video.
• The Polling Place Photo Project is a nationwide experiment in citizen journalism to capture, post and share photographs of democracy in action by documenting the local voting experience.
• Rock the Vote has launched a user-generated Get Out The Vote video campaign.
• Predict the winners of elections through sites like Midterm Madness and Predict06, where the crowd can try to determine who will win tomorrow‚Äôs election and why.
• Along with independent live blogging networks news organizations like the BBC, CNN and others are relying on citizen journalists to get full coverage of this years election.

Details on these options are available at Cohn’s blog.