Full Coverage: Internet

28.02.2008 BROOKLIN, Canada, Feb 27 (IPS) - Free, authoritative and online: 1.8 million species.

22.02.2008 Blogging, internet chat rooms and sites have become the safest ways for gay Africans and Arabs to meet, while keeping their identities secret. Caution is after all crucial as homosexual acts are illegal in most countries in Africa and the Middle East.

21.02.2008 A meeting of the members of the Indian Ocean Commission in Addis Ababa last week decided to give the go-ahead to connect their island-members by fibre to each other and the rest of the world. The connecting cable would be available on non-discriminatory terms and under a low-cost, high volume regime.

20.02.2008 A new service launched by the Romanian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology will enable self-employed and family businesses to register and carry out other procedures online. The service will also improve relations between local administrations and private entrepreneurs across rural areas and small cities.

19.02.2008 Even while a US-based body is running tests to see whether it will offer domain names in non-Roman alphabets, in countries such as India mobile companies are wooing rural users by offering services in local scripts to overcome the language barrier.

14.02.2008 A dozen auto rickshaws or e-Tuktuks equipped with laptops, printers, telephones, recorders, and the Internet roam the villages in remote Sri Lanka, combining the services of a traditional telecenter and radio station. So ingenious was the concept that it won the Stockhom Challenge GKP Award in Kuala Lumpur last December.

11.02.2008 A report by the UN body UNCTAD says the use of mobiles and the Internet in businesses, schools and homes help people prosper and drive long-term economic growth in developing countries. At the same time the report draws attention to the widening gap between rich and poor countries in broadband use.

06.02.2008 BOGOTA, Feb 5 (OneWorld) - An estimated 2 million Colombians marched here Monday in a show of opposition to the FARC guerrillas. Worldwide, solidarity protests organized through the Facebook online platform spanned 193 cities in Latin America, North America, Europe, and Asia.

05.02.2008 Much of the Middle East was cut off from the Internet and international telecommunications services yesterday when two sub-sea communications cables were severed.

It is believed that a vessel anchored illegally in a "closed to shipping" section of the Mediterranean close by Alexandria in Egypt was responsible for cutting both the FLAG and SeMeWe 4 cables. The two systems are separate but do lie close to one another on the sea bed at that point. It is the first time that two comms cables have been cut simultaneously and highlights the inherent fragility of such systems in areas of comparatively shallow water.

05.02.2008 This year the vote goes to My World and Viet Tech founder Nguyen Minh Tri from Vietnam. The runner-up in the annual competition to find the best entrepreneur age 30 or under in the Asia-Pacific region is Saloni Malhotra, founder and CEO of DesiCrew Solutions, an outsourcing business that taps India’s workforce in small towns and rural areas.

01.02.2008 Consumers of Internet services will have to wait much longer for faster and cheaper access that was to come through the National Fibre Optic Backbone. Industry insiders said construction of the terrestrial fibre optic cable that was commissioned last year is running behind schedule as a result of political skirmishes that followed the December 27 presidential election raising the prospect of delayed launch.