Yahoo is expected to announce the acquisition of blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion on Monday, with both companies' boards having agreed to the deal, according to reports in AllThingsD, which first broke the news of sale talks, as well as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

If it goes through as planned, buying Tumblr would be a signature deal for new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in her effort to transform the aging Web-media company into a producer of habit-forming online experiences. Tumblr has some 100 million monthly visitors, and its users publish 90 million posts a day. Those are some mighty habits, and they promise to offer considerable room for Yahoo's advertising sales team.

Selling can't have been an easy decision for Tumblr founder David Karp. When we last saw the youthful CEO in early April, he was on the campus of Facebook on the same day that the social network launched its Android Home software. As we left, we saw him locked in an intense conversation with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg, early in Facebook's life, also famously wrestled with a billion-dollar buyout offer from Yahoo. We have to wonder what they talked about.

One thing Karp and Mayer will have to figure out is the relationship the combined companies have with their users. Tumblr's users, a young, cool demographic Yahoo has fairly openly admitted it lacks, identify closely with the service.

Unlike Facebook, Tumblr is a place where they can reveal themselves without revealing themselves. The tolerance for provisional identity (and racy content) is a core part of Tumblr.

Yahoo is a muddle. While it was one of the first sites to let users log in and personalize experiences, it has faded as a source of online identity. The fact that you can use a Facebook or Google account to log in to Yahoo is telling.

The one notable exception is Flickr, the photo-sharing site that has seen a renaissance since Mayer became CEO. Yahoo is expected to announce significant upgrades to the service on Monday as well, and one source who has seen the new version of Flickr described it as "stunning."

Will Tumblr become part of Yahoo like Flickr—a distinct service with its own user culture? Or will it become part of the muddle of indistinct Yahoo services like Sports and Weather, more notable for their utility than their expressive nature?

Yahoo nearly crushed Flickr as it first integrated the photo-sharing site and then neglected it. To be useful to Yahoo, Tumblr will have to somehow fit into the rest of the operation. No amount of promises of hands-off treatment will change that reality. (Here's one way Tumblr could help Yahoo: Junk Yahoo's overcomplicated in-house publishing systems and move all of the media operations onto Tumblr.)

Even the question of how users log in to Tumblr, post-Yahoo, will be key. Will they retain a provisional identity, unlinked to their real name and the rest of their online activity? Or will it get folded into everything else they do on Yahoo? That question is crucial, and as Yahoo learned with Flickr, it's easy to screw up.

The difference is that Yahoo spent a few tens of millions of dollars on Flickr. Screwing up Tumblr would be a far more expensive mistake.

Currently, the position is filled by the moose-hunting, oral tobacco product enthusiast Anders Dalenius.

According to psfk, "The campaign was conceived by the Stockholm agency Volontaire for the tourism group Visit Sweden and then green lit by the government."

The idea seems to be that normal Swedes will do a better job at representing their country to the outside world (the tweets are in English... or variants thereof) than either their government or an advertising campaign.

However, the "curation" is hardly random. Upcoming participants include a teacher, a priest and a lady truck driver. No doubt an attempt is being made to show a wide-spectrum picture of the country. (Most Swedes are neither Bosnian nor non-traditional laborers.)

So it might be more accurate to say the experiment is to use social media to present a picture of Sweden at its best and most diverse. There's nothing wrong with that - social media allows us to present a picture of ourselves of our own choosing. It has the immediacy of voice, but that doesn't mean it has unmediated authenticity.

Still, the dude is tweeting about moose hunting. That strikes me as full-bore whole-cloth Swedish weirdness. So, mission accomplished.

Ryan Gosling Feminist, one of the smarter iterations of this meme was created by Danielle Henderson, a graduate student in the University of Wisconsin Madison's women and gender studies program. We asked her a few questions about her take on the popularity of "Hey Girl." And just days after we did that, the Internet produced Museum Hey Girl, for the artier among us. Hey Girl Happy Hannukah appeared on December 20, the first day of the holiday.

The idea for RyanGoslingFeminist came about after lunch with a few new graduate school friends who hadn't heard of the "Hey Girl" meme. Henderson decided to introduce them to it by creating a few flash cards based on the theory they were learning. The she posted them to Tumblr, and RyanGoslingFeminist was born. This was on a Friday evening. By that Saturday morning, Jezebel picked it up.

This is not at all the first celebrity-inspired Internet memes. LesbiansWhoLookLikeJustinBieber points to the secret that everyone fears blurting lest they appear homophobic - Justin Bieber is as androgynous as most boyish lesbians, and vice versa. And then there's RappersDoingNormalShit, which makes the all-mighty rapper appear as mundane as your boring next-door neighbor.

These memes are never-ending virtual art shows curated by either one person or the collective Internet. Henderson wasn't really thinking about that when she created FeministRyanGosling, which provides a feminist context to the blank slate that is the open-ended "Hey Girl" meme.

"I don't really follow memes, and don't think of what I'm doing as fitting into that category," she tells us. "I'm still just posting flashcards for my friends, and could stop the whole thing tomorrow. I have no allegiance to this format. I'm just a nerd trying to get through the semester."
 
Truth be told, she actually dislikes memes and the collective impact they've had on the Internet-at-large.

"It's like in junior high when people would repeat the same joke over and over again until eventually it removed all joy and just filled you with contempt," she says. "I think memes contribute to the community feeling everyone thinks the Internet should instill in us so that we don't feel so bad about spending most of our free time communicating to a machine, but they mostly serve to remind me how unoriginal and boring we've become."

Like the nice guy who won't leave your side, Ryan Gosling hangs on till the bitter end - even when the meme he inspires makes us feel like completely unoriginal pop culture-obsessed media consumers. Henderson, for one, counts herself as one engaged in this love/hate relationship with memes. "I'm including myself here, of course," she tells us, "as what I'm doing is totally derivative."

Here's a full list of the "Hey Girl" meme iterations that we've found.

• Hey Girl I'm A Serial Killer
• Librarian Hey Girl
• Ex-Boyfriend Ryan Gosling
• Feminist Ryan Gosling
• Ryan Gosling Disneyland Cats
• Typographer Ryan Gosling
• Fuck Yeah Ryan Gosling
• Museum Hey Girl
• FeministRyanGosling
• Hey Girl Shabbat Shalom
• Manarchist Ryan Gosling
• Public Policy Ryan Gosling
• Law School Ryan Gosling
• Preservationist Ryan Gosling
• Stage Manager Ryan Gosling
• "Campaign Staff" Ryan Gosling
• Biostatistics Ryan Gosling
• Medieval History Ryan Gosling
• Handmade Ryan Gosling
• Programmer Ryan Gosling
• Silicon Valley Ryan Gosling
• Teacher Ryan Gosling

Please enjoy a few more variations on "Hey Girl." We picked these especially for you.

Ryan Gosling Typography

Ryan Gosling Feminist

Ryan Gosling Stage Manager

Did we miss any variations on "Hey Girl"? Let us know in the comments below. We'll add them to the list.

For now, Twitvid's frontpage interface looks more like Digg's (before the social newsrooms). It shows most popular TwitVids by views, along with a featured Twitvid and a Twitvid Tuesdays Winner. There is a list of popular members on the right rail. Twitvid is tossing this simplistic design for user profiles that focus on personalized video taste. Sharing will be more focused around personal interests rather than top rated content. Imagine the Facebook news feed, but only populated by video that has been personalized to your tastes.

Twitvid will also feature channels organized around specific interests.

Twitvid has seen its user base grow 100% since last year. Currently there are more than 12 million unique visitors. Twitvid launched in May 2009. We first wrote about it in July 2009, back when it was a a brand new iPhone app for uploading video to Twitter.

The country is now crowdsourcing the writing of its new constitution.

From the Althing to the Latest Thing

As the Guardian points out, Iceland has retained the same constitution since its independence from Denmark in 1944. That document was copied wholesale from the Danish with a few cosmetic changes.

Iceland's Constitutional Council has decided that involving the people in every aspect of creating a new guiding national document would best be done by leveraging social media tools in addition to an open meetings policy. Using a website, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a YouTube channel and a Flickr account, the council is practicing a kind of openness that may seem unprecedented to the citizens of most countries.

But Icelanders are old hands at this sort of thing. Their parliament, the Alþingi, started in 930 C.E. with leaders from around the island gathering in the fields of Þingvellir to argue issues of import to the community. It is the oldest parliament in the world.

ReadWritePolitics

This does seem to be a real instance of read/write politics. In addition to posting versions of the new constitution online and giving people an opportunity to watch the council members debate and work, they are also soliciting feedback, both actively and, given the commenting function of the tools they are using, structurally.

It is far from guaranteed that this process will give Icelanders a sense of investment in, and responsibility for, the new constitution, and whether it protects against the kind of walled-off and disconnected government that allowed all the major Icelandic banks to fail. But, given the country's needs, its recent history, its ancient history and its extraordinary level of online participation, it is surely worth a try.

The final draft will be presented to the people in a referendum.

Council photo via Stjórnlagaráð, video via Stjórnlagaráð | other sources: Zaq Mosher

"We're asking readers to help us identify interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight. Interested users can fill out a simple form to describe the nature of the e-mail, and provide a name and e-mail address so we'll know who should get the credit. Join us here on Friday afternoon and into the weekend to participate."

The Times has a cadre of reporters in Alaska's capitol, Juneau. But the sheer amount of information and the perennial race to be first out with the story has inspired the news to lasso their readers into the process. The NYT has a robust relationship with the Web (including a syndication deal with ReadWriteWeb) and has a reasonably intelligent and engaged readership.

The release, which begins at 9:00 a.m. Alaska time (one hour earlier than Pacific Time) tomorrow, will consist of "e-mails Ms. Palin sent as governor, mostly using private accounts" and "are to be released in response to public records requests first made in 2008," according to the Times. The release is only being made in hard copy, which will fill "six standard paper boxes, a total of about 250 pounds at a printing cost of $725 per set."

Palin is currently on a bus trip across the country which reads as a thinly-disguised public relations event and temperature-taking for a possible run at the presidency. Even if she decides against running, her influence with the right-wing Tea Party movement makes her newsworthy. So what she my have thought and how she may have acted while in office as Alaska's governor will be of interest to many.

Other news organizations are also preparing processes to leverage the participation of their audience, including MSNBC, Mother Jones and ProPublica, who are working with Crivella West to create a publicly searchable database.

Palin photo by asecondhandconjecture

Her version was that Paul Revere rode through Boston, ringing a bell, to announce to the British that the colonials were preparing to fight. This is not remotely true. He rode silently, to let the revolutionaries know the British were en route.

Update after the jump.

When she was braced for the mistake on Fox News Sunday, she refused to admit she was wrong.

"I didn't mess up about Paul Revere. Part of his ride was to warn the British that we're already there - that, 'Hey, you're not going to succeed. You're not going to take American arms. You are not going to beat our own well-armed persons, individual, private militia that we have. He did warn the British."

It's true that Revere did tell the British the Americans were ready to fight. Later. After the ride. After he had been captured. Without bells. And had firearms pointed at him. In an attempt to rattle and mislead his captors.

So, you know. Palin was right.

As Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs noted, this rearrangement of history has been playing out on Wikipedia's Paul Revere page.

Pro-Palin contributors have been changing, and others reversing, language justifying her comments, as can be seen in the Revisions page for the entry. Here is a discussion centering on the controversy.

Anyone who has written an article or a paper or just done a search in the last few years can tell you how important Wikipedia is as an initial (alas, all too often also an only source) for information. The give-and-take built into the Wiki process seems to be keeping the boat upright, but only just.

Imagine pulling up the entry on deadline for a school paper. Depending on when you tune in, you might be making Paul into a Ninja messenger or a bell-ringing Muppet. Naturally, anyone who accepts a single source as Gospel is not doing the job of a thinking person, but it happens.

The really awful thing, though, is that we live in an age where, on every level, it is considered a sin to be wrong. From advertisers to kids on the playground to the world of corporate PR to politicians, the all-too-common wisdom is to defend the indefensible. That's what Palin is doing and that is what her renfields on Wikipedia are doing, and that's sad, because as anyone remotely successful in Silicon Valley can tell you, without owning our mistakes we cannot learn from them and without learning, we cannot win.

***

Jay Walsh, Head of Communications for Wikimedia Foundation clarified the situation from his organization's point of view.

"The article is right now in semi-protection, which means that only registered editors (those who have a registered accounts on Wikipedia, specifically those who have had an account for more than a few days) can make changes to the page. Only a fraction of pages on English Wikipedia are actually in any sort of protection mode, but this isn't uncommon when the article in question is about an emerging news topic and/or a living person...I think it's something in the order of 1500 or so of the 3.5 million-plus articles on English Wikipedia.

"Right now a group of smart, experienced Wikipedians are having a civil discussion about the article, and as is pretty much always the case with devoted Wikipedians, they want to ensure the article is of the highest possible quality. I expect some new Wikipedians came to this article in an effort to share their views on the topic, either by making edits or participating in the discussion. On the article's talk page you can see where contributors are sharing views and discussing the whole affair. This is 100% normal for Wikipedia and
it's a sign that passionate people are working towards an inclusive but factual article."

Sarah Palin photo by Roger Goun, Paul Revere house photo by Boston Public Library | other sources: Boston Globe

The crowdsourced computing initiative which those behind the Australia bid have put together will leverage personal computer power in lieu of extremely expensive petaflop supercomputers.

Artist's rendition of the Square Kilometre Array

Computerworld Australia describes the crowdsourcing project.

"The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), along with iVEC, the company running the $80 million high performance computing Pawsey Centre at CSIRO in Western Australia, are set to launch a 'citizen science' application this year based on the open source Nereus V Cloud computing technology developed at Oxford University. The application, dubbed "theskynet" by Australian researchers, would grant anyone not affiliated with the global telescope project access to the datasets formed out of the array's work."

By 2013, when it is fully up and running, the application should allow the Pawsey Centre to engage in petaflop computing. It will also make it the third-fastest supercomputer in the world, as well as possbily the largest cloud computing networks on the globe.

According to PopSci, the SKA will consist of 3,000 radio dishes, "spread as far as 2,000 miles in every direction from a central core, offering a full 1,000,000 square meters (that's one square kilometer) of collection surface."

There have been crowdsourcing projects already to help crunch the massive data that comes through various astronomical projects, most famously, the Seti@Home project, which began in 1999. Seti@Home is a radio telescope project to listen for signals that might come from intelligent life. It continues to this day.

Distributing computing and storage needs between institutional and personal computers is not a one-way street. In addition to saving money, saving heat and energy (using already-running computers), it will also provide datasets from the array to both scientists and members of the public willing to run the app on their rigs.

Australian radio telescope photo by Amanda Stater

TwitPic's new terms of service should clear up that confusion. In it TwitPic explicitly states that content uploaded by a user is the copyright of the respective owner. It is not part of the public domain and is subject to how the user, not media organizations, chooses to have it disseminated.

Copyright law tells us that when ever somebody creates something, be it a short story, a piece of music or a photo essay, as soon as it is created the person who made it is the de facto copyright holder. That is unless the person has given explicit to a different party to be the copyright holder of anything that person creates.

"To clarify our ToS regarding ownership, you the user retain all copyrights to your photos and videos, it's your content," Noah Everett, founder of TwitPic, wrote on the company's blog. "Our terms state by uploading content to Twitpic you allow us to distribute that content on twitpic.com and our affiliated partners. This is standard among most user-generated content sites (including Twitter). If you delete a photo or video from Twitpic, that content is no longer viewable."

TwitPic users have fought back against the media. One photographer, Emily James of Just Do it, went so far as to invoice The Daily Mail in the United Kingdom £1,170 (British pounds, around $1,900 America dollars by today's exchange rate) for photos that it had used of a polling station during the British General Election.

New media copyright is a Wild West of usage and rules. Generally, copyright and Creative Commons are the rules for using photos taken off the Internet and social media. That does not stop thousands of blogs from using whatever photos they want and getting away with it. The difference between small blogs and big media, though, is that mainstream publications stand to make money off the photos they attach to their content.

The rule is simple. If you create it, you own the copyright. Media organizations have to give attribution and/or compensation to the producer if they use that content.

Now, Web technologies are allowing the peoples in question to dynamically capture and pass on the wisdom and experiences of their culture as a whole and those of their elders in particular. Here are two particularly exciting examples of how technology has been used in Australia to achieve these goals.

For the record, the term "aboriginal" as a noun describing the native peoples of the continent has fallen out of failure. Aside from being tarred with racist attitudes, it is also impossibly reductive. In much the same way that the "Indians" of the United States are very different from one another, the dozen-plus major cultural groups of native Australians are equally distinct. "Aboriginal Australians" and similar phrases are now favored.

The Ara Irititja Project.

"The aim of Ara Irititja is to bring back home materials of cultural and historical significance to Anangu. These include photographs, films, sound recordings and documents. Ara Irititja has designed a purpose-built computer archive that digitally stores repatriated materials and other contemporary items."

It's a deep indicator of the importance of both culture and the technology that has been brought to bear in its service that the focus of the project is in building a cultural database accessible by all via the Web. The Anangu approach to melding the two is eye-opening.

"Anangu have managed complex cultural information systems for thousands of years, restricting access to some knowledge on the basis of seniority and gender. Ara Irititja has integrated these cultural priorities into the design of its digital archive."

What the Anangu are doing is so complex and multifarious that proper coverage of their efforts could easily fill a book. Chapters might include physical archiving, language preservation and teaching, gathering living voices, culturally-based software development, helping other groups make the transition to the Web, creating multimedia expressions of cultural concerns, exhibition creation and developing protocols for the sharing of information with outsiders. Of particular interest, I think, is the way the Anangu inflect their use of communications technologies to reflect their cultural values. In other words, technology remains a tool in their hands, not vice versa.

Mission Voices.

These oral histories were gathered in conjunction with the Koorie Heritage Trust. The Koorie are a people of New South Wales and Victoria, in the southeast of the country. The emphasis is information from and about "missions and reserves," the rough equivalent of "Indian reservations" in the United States. These reserves include Ebenezer, Lake Tyers, Coranderrk, Cummeragunja, Framlingham and Lake Condah.

According to the website, the human emphasis was on Australian Aboriginal elders.

"Elders were invited from across Victoria to be a part of the project. There are many more Elders across this state and country that have an important contribution to make with the telling of their story. This site is only representative of a section of the history of missions and reserves in Victoria and only some of the voices."

Readers can navigate the site by reserve or by subjects, such as spirituality, justice and living culture; or by, as the site itself puts it, "the land and the theme." From this context-building information, including video presentations, the visitor can drill down to individual voices, such as Uncle Jack, a Wotjobaluk and World War II vet.

Do your people use the Web to preserve and pass on their culture? Do you work on such a project? Or is there simply a project of that description from which you gained something by interacting? If so, please share it with us and your fellow readers in the comments.

Top photo from Ara Irititja | other illustrations and photos from Mission Voices | special thanks to @debrockstroh

To celebrate the U.S.'s 120th Arbor Day, you can take a stroll through 3D stands of ancient redwood trees.

In a post on the Google Blog, Emily Limm of Save the Redwoods explains how to access the 3D walks.

"Explore the park by activating the 3D trees layer in Earth (under 3D Buildings) and searching for [Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, CA]. Tilt your view angle toward the horizon to make the trees appear."

StR is also launching a new citizen scientist venture that sounds very cool. Redwood Watch launches today, powered by iNaturalist.org, a platform for recording, organizing and mapping nature observations.

"By sharing a simple digital photograph of a redwood tree and the time and location where the picture was taken, you can help the League track and monitor the species. If you know of a redwood tree--perhaps in your own backyard or in a nearby park--you can use the free Redwood Watch iPhone application or your own camera to take a photo, add a comment and submit it online. iNaturalist stores your observation and, if geographical coordinates weren't captured automatically, uses the Google Maps APIs to assign them to your photo. With your geolocated observation, we can zoom out and analyze your observation in the context of global environmental and climatic patterns."

A lovely way to celebrate our "often under-appreciated forests." Now, if you'll excuse me, I got some trees here in desperate need of hugging.

The women used Google Map Maker, and their specific local knowledge, to fill in schools, health centers, market centers, community development projects, restaurants and roads in a country too often neglected by cartographers.

Jacqueline Rajuai, Geo Specialist with Google, said the mix of women and the skills and knowledge they brought ranged widely.

"We had a mix of students, web developers, Non-profit CEOs, an advocate and even an editor. Their backgrounds were quite an interesting mix as we had Computer Science students and Geography students, participants with an environmental background but the common factor is that they had an interest to improve the Kenya maps. Either where they live, where they have projects or areas they frequent."

This is hardly the first time Google has invited people to an intensive mapping party. Not unlike the independent Map Kibera experiment, Google invited the inhabitants of Korogocho to put themselves on the map. A Pakistan project brought people together last year to map changes after that country's horrific mudslides.

Google is hardly a non-profit. All the information entered is available for further iterations of the company's maps. However, Rajuai says this undertaking extends beyond making a profit.

"The bigger aim of all this is to make the world's information accessible, and also to make sure that we get more African content, and to make the internet useful and relevant for Africans."

Any readers involved in other crowdsourced mapping projects? Let us know in the comments.

In conjunction with local online news site YemenPortal, polymath activist group MidEast Youth, probably best known for the Free Kareem campaign (they did, eventually), has launched an English and an Arabic version of its Crowdvoice software and website to capture information about tomorrow's protests in Yemen.

CrowdVoice allows readers to read, and contribute to, a user-generated, dynamic aggregation of information on a specific topic. Iranian-American activist and Daily Beast contributor Reza Aslan called it a "powerful tool for discovering voices of dissent."

Features include a blog widget to funnel contributions to a user's site and the ability to subscribe.

In Yemen, protests have been taking place almost daily since the middle of last month in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. That on January 27th is said to have been attended by as many as 16,000 protesters. Like Tunisia and Egypt, a major demand of the protesters is an end to the 32-year rule of its president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. A constitutional amendment currently before the legislature would legalize Saleh's lifetime occupation of that office.

Unlike both Tunisia and Egypt, the strongest voice calling for this day of concerted protest doesbelong to the representative of an Islamist group. In addition to being a senior member of the Islamist-influenced opposition Al-Ishah party, Tawakel Karman, is also an activist and the founder of the non-governmental organization Women Journalists Without Chains. She was arrested on January 22nd and held for several days before being released.

Esra'a Al-Shahei, founder of MidEast Youth, said the protests do not seem any more "Islamist-led" than those in Tunisia or Egypt.

"My personal opinion (is) it isn't being led by Islamists at all. Women's rights defenders appear to be the forefront of many of these protests."

The day has generated its own hashtag, #feb3, a Yemeni version of Egypt's #jan25.

Disclosure: MidEast Youth provided server space for the Committee to Protect Bloggers, which I founded. I have also worked with them briefly on other projects. While the editor at CPB, I covered the travails of YemenPortal.

Since a young Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire on December 17 to protest conditions in his North African country, and the country went up in flames, most Western, and all American media, has been unearthly silent.

#sidibouzid

Only yesterday a survey of the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe and Miami Herald showed absolutely no front-page coverage of Tunisia.

Meanwhile, the social web has lit up with the topic. Led by, but not restricted to, Arab and Muslim bloggers, the oppression of young people, workers and others by the Tunisian government, the protests it has led to, the rolling out of the military, and the approximately 50 deaths, have been covered extensively on Twitter and on other social media.

Instead, those interested have turned to Twitter accounts like that of @wedaddy, a Mauritanian in Boston and journalist @monaeltahawy. Brian Whit's Al-Bab blog provides a daily digest of news from Tunisia.

On Twitter, the coverage has been hashtagged #sidibouzid, for the city Bouazizi killed himself in and where the protests started. Additional tags have included #jasminrevolution and, for the hacktivist actions against the government's websites by Anonymous some are using #optunisia.

Another important source for news on Tunisia is YouTube and other video sharing sites. (Here's a collection of 134 videos on the events in Tunisia.) The violence against protesters has been extravagant and bloody and witnesses have not been shy about posting the results of the government crackdown.

Slim

The topic of the Tunisian crackdown has become important in French media, in part thanks to Fabrice Epelboin, the editor of our sister-publication, ReadWriteWeb France. His open letter to the French Foreign Minister got a lot of attention, including a story by Public Radio International's Clark Boyd on The World radio show (an "exception that proves the rule" for American media coverage).

Among those arrested during the crackdown is our own Slim Amamou. Slim is a popular Tunisian blogger and proponent of free speech. He's also de la familia, having contributed articles to ReadWriteWeb France and helped me with perspective on both technology and North African life. Slim is just the kind of man a sane government would want on the outside, engaging in conversation devoted to improving his home. Instead, he remains locked up.

The day before he was arrested he too was interviewed by Boyd on The World.

As a vacation destination for Europeans, coverage of Tunisia has gained some traction there. However, given the horrendous shooting of Rep. Giffords and others at her rally in Arizona by a lunatic, it may have been inevitable that American coverage would start slow and stay slow. This morning the New York Times published a short story on the army being called in, and since then stories on Tunisia have begun to trickle into the U.S. news stream. This nascent coverage notwithstanding, the media here still seems to be treating it as a something of a sideshow

It remains most likely that the first and best coverage of breaking news on this awful situation is going to continue to come from the social web.

WikiLeaks -- its actions and the reactions to them, the implications of what has happened around the whistle-blowing site -- has given birth to an extremely complex and ever-changing situation. In lieu of summing up a situation that has not come to a tidy conclusion, we have put together a full timeline of WikiLeaks news and analysis from our site. Read through from our earliest coverage (February, 2008) to our most recent (today) and you should have a reasonably complete sense of why WikiLeaks is important.

WikiLeaks, Censorship and the Watchdog Web February 18, 2008

“A very interesting site for whistle blowers called WikiLeaks is facing government censorship as today a California judge reportedly ruled that the company in control of the site’s domain name must shut down public access to the entire site.”

Wikileaks Calls for Help in Taking Whistle Blower Site to the Next Level November 28, 2008.

“Wikileaks.org, a website that publishes classified, confidential, censored or otherwise secret documents for anyone to see, put out a call last night for help in advancing the site beyond its remarkable early success. Just a week after publishing one of its most high profile documents yet, the organization sent an email to subscribers last night asking them to “tell us your most radical ideas for our vision of justice and how they might be economically, politically, legally, technically and socially sustained.”

Wikileaks and Publishers to Partner on Whistleblower Stories October 9, 2009

“The group will give publishers the opportunity to embed a Wikileaks submission form on their websites. The idea is that users will be able to anonymously upload material, and Wikileaks will verify it. In return for embedding the form, the publisher will receive the verified documents under embargo and will be the first to publish the story.”

Wikileaks Releases Over Half a Million Pager Messages from 9/11 November 25, 2009

“Earlier this morning, Wikileaks began to post pager messages that were sent on September 11, 2001. According to Wikileaks, these messages were intercepted by an ‘organization which has been intercepting and archiving US national telecommunications since prior to 9/11.’”

Wikileaks Plugs the Leak While It Waits for Funding January 29, 2010

“If you woke up today thinking this would finally be the day you would leak that top-secret document, you might want to hold off for another day. Wikileaks, the Internet home for whistleblowers world-wide, has temporarily shut its doors to concentrate on fundraising.”

Apple Bans Cartoon Ulysses: This Week in Online Tyranny June 17, 2010.

“Iceland establishes strong free-speech laws. In order to become a “new media haven” Iceland has passed the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative proposal, co-written by whistle-blower site WikiLeaks.”

Wikileaks Releases 91,000 Afghanistan War Documents Online July 25, 2010

“‘The reports, while written by soldiers and intelligence officers mainly describing lethal military actions involving the United States military, also include intelligence information, reports of meetings with political figures, and related detail.’”

Wikileaks Data Spurs App Development August 9, 2010

“While politicians, pundits, military, and journalists assess and debate the fallout from Wikileaks’ release of the ‘Afghan War Diary’ – the legality and ethics of Wikileaks, its impact on the war efforts, the rise of the ‘world’s first stateless news organization’ – a number of developers are diving right into the 91,000 some odd classified documents and seeing what they can do with the data.”

Visualizing the Wikileaks Data August 19, 2010

“A group of hackademics took the Wikileaks activity data from the Afghanistan war and mapped it, creating a video visualization of the events. The 91,000 documents track events including friendly fire and civilian injuries and death over the course of the last six years.”

WikiLeakiLeaks: Open Attack or Honest Attempt At Media Transparency? August 30, 2010

“Gawker has had enough of the tight-lipped Wikileaks and its elusive founder, Julian Assange, it would seem. According to a blog post this morning, the media outlet decries the website to be ‘about as open as North Korea.’ In response, it has launched the hilariously-named Wikileakileaks, ‘your source for Wikileaks-related secrets, documents and rumors.’”

Wikileaks Officials Quit Over Iraq War Doc Release September 28, 2010

“Wikileaks came to prominence after it released 91,000 documents related to the Afghanistan War. Now, officials inside the organization have begun leaving in protest over its founder’s insistence on releasing nearly 400,000 similar documents from the Iraq War.”

Bahraini Blogger Tortured: This Week in Online Tyranny October 15, 2010

“After being dropped by Moneybooker, the e-commerce company that processes the organizations donations, Assange accused it of collusion in a U.S. government conspiracy to destroy him.”

Wikileaks Founder: Media Reports of Iraq Document Release Based on “Tabloid” Blog October 18, 2010

“Take a look this morning at Reuters, the BBC, CNN or any number of other media sources and you’ll read that WikiLeaks, the controversial wiki-based site for whistle-blowers, is about to release nearly half a million records pertaining to the Iraq War. Wikileaks says that this news has been reported in more than 700 articles across the Web and that it’s all based on ‘a single tabloid blog at Wired Magazine.’”

Police in 14 Countries Raid File-Sharing Hosts And Hit Close to Wikileaks September 7, 2010

“The raid comes as Wikileaks is preparing to release 15,000 classified documents related to the war in Afghanistan, which the U.S. government is anxious to prevent. PRQ denied that Wikileaks was the subject of the raid, and Wikileaks has not made any statement yet.”

Wikileaks Loses Funding, Claims Government Blacklist to Blame October 15, 2010

“Wikileaks, the wiki-based site for whistle-blowers, has been facing increasing pressure from the U.S. government since its July release of more than 90,000 war documents from the war in Afghanistan. Today, the Guardian is reporting that this pressure has finally hit where it hurts the most – in the pocket – as the site’s funding has been blocked.”

Examining Today’s Coverage of Wikileaks Iraq Documents October 22, 2010

“Wikileaks’ leak of its approximately 400,000 Iraq military field reports to major media outlets has turned into a torrent today. Like the whistle-blower outfit’s release of its 91,000 Afghanistan war documents, it gave the MSM a chance to look, and interpret, before releasing any information to the public.”

Wikileaks’ Iraq War Diaries Available for Download – Data Visualization October 25, 2010

“As most readers probably know by now, Julian Assange, Wikileaks’ leader, has gone ahead with the release of 391,832 secret documents related to the war in Iraq. These documents cover most of the period between May 2004 and March 2009.”

Wikileaks Iraq Redactions Last-Minute, Possibly Automated October 27, 2010

“Anonymous whistle-blowing outfit Wikileaks has been criticized for insufficiently redacting (covering or deleting) the names of civilians in its release of Afghanistan war documents. Everyone from the more predictable U.S. officials to non-profits like Reporters Without Borders to Wikileaks’ own staff has faulted its founder, Julian Assange for a lack of concern for people’s lives. As unlikely as it might seem, given apparent Assange’s high-handedness with media and co-workers and many conspiracy theories, he seems to have heard the complaints. In the latest release, that of almost 400,000 documents related to the Iraq War, redactions were carried out.”

Wikileaks Mutineers Create Rival Organization November 7, 2010

“Back in September, we reported that whistle-blowing site Wikileaks had hemorrhaged a number of prominent personnel. Now some of those who’ve left have begun assembling an organization designed to directly compete with its parent. The alleged high-handedness of the organization’s founder, Julian Assange, and the beliefs of some of his co-workers’ belief that he has not properly protected lives by carefully redacting the Iraq documents, has created a rift and the rift has created and opportunity.”

Over 250,000 U.S. Diplomatic Documents Released by Wikileaks November 28, 2010

“Hours prior to the documents’ publication, Wikileaks tweeted that the website was experiencing a ‘mass distributed denial of service attack.’ But whether or not the site goes down – it’s functioning, albeit slowly at this time – the documents released today have already been distributed to a number of international news agencies who are publishing their findings from the trove of leaked documents.”

Wikileaks Moves to Amazon Web Services November 29, 2010

“Yesterday we reported that Wikileaks’ web site suffered a denial of service (DOS) attack just before the publication of its most recent cache of documents. The site was down for only a few hours, according to Forbes’ Andy Greenberg. Today, The Guardian reports that Wikileaks turned to Amazon.com’s Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) service to get back online and survive the DOS attack.”

Amazon.com Drops Wikileaks December 1, 2010

“Amazon.com has taken down the Wikileaks web site under what appears to be pressure from the U.S. government. Senator Lieberman issued a statement saying that Amazon.com has informed his staff that the company has ceased hosting Wikileaks.”

Weekly Poll: Should Amazon.com Have Dropped Wikileaks? December 1, 2010

“Our question for the week: Should Amazon Have Dropped Wikileaks?”

Amazon.com Explains Why It Dropped Wikileaks December 2, 2010

“Amazon.com issued a statement today regarding its decision to stop hosting Wikileaks’ main site yesterday, claiming the organization’s site violated the Amazon Web Services terms of service and that the content was endangering peoples’ lives.”

Another Falls: Tableau Software Drops Wikileaks Data Visualizations December 2, 2010

“Facing indirect pressure from the U.S. Government, Tableau Software has dropped Wikileaks’ data from its site for people to use for data visualization. According to an announcement posted on Tableau’s blog, the company decided to drop Wikileaks’ content after reading Sen. Joe Lieberman’s public request that companies hosting Wikileaks’ data remove it.”

Wikileaks Loses its DNS Service December 2, 2010

“‘EveryDNS.net provided domain name system (DNS) services to the wikileaks.org domain name until 10PM EST, December 2, 2010, when such services were terminated. As with other users of the EveryDNS.net network, this service was provided for free. The termination of services was effected pursuant to, and in accordance with, the EveryDNS.net Acceptable Use Policy.”‘

Top 10 Culture of Tech Stories of 2010 December 3, 2010

“Wikileaks, the site and the group behind it, could not have happened until the social web did. Leaks have happened for decades but the penetration and the mass of documents only became possible recently. Websites, email, wikis, blogs, microblogs and social networks created a network of avenues for leaks to come in and to spread out again.”

Wikileaks Releases Diplomatic Cables: This Week in Online Tyranny December 3, 2010

“The whistle-blower site’s previous release of Afghani and Iraqi war documents inspired a lot of criticism, much of which was understandable even for those who did not agree. After all, lives were (arguably) at stake. The current brouhaha over the diplomatic cables just seems like pique on behalf of the embarrassed governments.”

PayPal Announces It Will No Longer Handle Wikileaks Donations December 4, 2010

“PayPal has posted a (late-night) statement to its website, saying: ‘PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We’ve notified the account holder of this action.’”

Wikileaks’ Assange May be TIME’s Person of the Year December 6, 2010

“Wanted by the law across multiple countries, threatened with military action by US hawks, shut out by internet vendors from Amazon to PayPal, Wikileaks leader Julian Assange may still be named TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2010. He’s currently leading in the magazine’s online poll, ahead of the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Erdogan, in influence score if not in votes.”

The Weakest Link: What Wikileaks Has Taught Us About the Open Internet December 6, 2010

“‘The first serious infowar is now engaged,’” EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow tweeted on Friday. “‘The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops.’”

Facebook: We’re Not Kicking Wikileaks Off Our Site December 6, 2010

“‘The Wikileaks Facebook Page does not violate our content standards nor have we encountered any material posted on the page that violates our policies.’”

Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Arrested in London December 7, 2010

“The much-maligned Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange has been arrested this morning in London. Assange turned himself in to London police to face a Swedish arrest warrant for rape allegations, which Assange has denied.”

PayPal: Decision to Drop Wikileaks Was “Straightforward” December 8, 2010

“Over the weekend, PayPal announced that it would no longer handle donations to whistleblower site Wikileaks. In a late night statement, the company said that the site had violated its terms of service and the account would be immediately shut down.”

DDoS Attacks Take Down Mastercard and Visa Websites, “Payback” for Their Stance on WikiLeaks December 8, 2010

“Mastercard’s website was down for several hours this morning, and now it appears as though Visa’s is offline as well, as these sites have become the targets of ongoing DDoS attacks. And so the infowar rages on today with these latest shots apparently fired by Anonymous, a vigilante group of hacktivists loosely affiliated with the message board 4chan.”

Anonymous Ousted from Twitter and Facebook, Back on Twitter Already December 8, 2010

“Following its very public DDoS attacks on the Visa and Mastercard websites this afternoon, it appears as though the vigilante group Anonymous will no longer be able to keep us apprised via Twitter or Facebook. The group’s access to both social networking sites has been pulled. Updated: 30 minutes later, it looks like you can follow Anonymous at @AnonOps.”

Wikileaks on Pirate Bay: The Facts & Figures December 8, 2010

“The US government has called on the organization Wikileaks to “return” all the classified documents it received and has begun to publish and “destroy” all the documents in its databases. For at least the fraction of the documents that have been released to the public, it’s far too late for that.”

President Bill Clinton Talks About Wikileaks December 8, 2010

“Clinton used the Wikileaks issue to illustrate the theme of his discussion, which centered on instability in the world. ‘What you do not see is how many people were exposed,’ Clinton said about Wikileaks, referring to informants providing information about their native countries to the United States. As a result, people may be killed and careers will be ruined, Clinton said.”

Operation Payback Targets Amazon; WikiLeaks Cables Found in Kindle Book Store December 9, 2010

“Less than an hour ago, the Twitter account @Op_Payback (Operation Payback) tweeted its intention to take down Amazon.com with its LOIC application, the software designed to launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, as directed by the group of hackers known only as Anonymous. The group’s Operation Payback campaign has already hit websites like MasterCard and Visa in recent days, successfully taking the sites offline for hours.”

Wikipedia Editors Delete Article Listing Wikileaks Mirror Sites December 9, 2010

“One thing that keeps Wikileaks going, however, is the simple fact that it has hundreds of mirror sites in different languages and locales. One such listing of these sites hosted on name-in-kind service Wikipedia has been deleted by the collaborative encyclopedia’s editors. Should we cry ‘Foul!’ or is the deletion just more business as usual for the site?”

WikiLeaks, Anonymous & the Unfolding Cyberwar, 11 Days In December 9, 2010

“It’s been 11 days since the first batch of U.S. diplomatic cables was released by the online organization WikiLeaks. A lot has happened in those 11 days. Below is a recounting of the key events, issues and debates that have arisen. There’s enough going on that it’s almost sure to include some details you weren’t familiar with, dear reader, but we also invite you to correct the history we’re working on documenting as it unfolds.”

Anonymous Appears to Threaten Electronic Frontier Foundation with DDOS Attack December 9, 2010

"Hacker vigilante group Anonymous may have followed up its distributed denial of service attacks against Mastercard and Visa with a threat to do the same to...the Electronic Frontier Foundation."

Operation Avenge Assange as Digital Direct Action December 9, 2010

"But history reveals much that is hidden, and we will see how history will judge WikiLeaks and Operation Payback. In this post, I will analyze Operation Avenge Assange in light of nonviolent direct action as it has been traditionally considered."

As Attacks on PayPal, Amazon Fail, Anonymous Wikileaks Supporters Begin "Operation LeakSpin" December 10, 2010

"Due to its loose and decentralized nature, later attacks organized by the hacker group known as Anonymous appeared to have failed. PayPal updated its company blog yesterday to note that all PayPal sites are, and have remained, "'fully operational.'"

Where In the World Is WikiLeaks Mirrored? [Google Earth] December 10, 2010

"WikiLeaks currently has well over 1,000 mirrors, which host the same data in different locations in case the parent site is taken down, and one Harvard developer has gathered all of these mirrors into a Google Earth visualization to show from whence these leaks have sprung."

DDoS Attacks Make Headlines, But How Common Are They? December 13, 2010

"By attacking the websites of the largest names in finance and e-commerce - Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Amazon - last week's actions by the vigilante "group" called Anonymous have thrust DDOS attacks into the spotlight. Although some are pegging this as a new form of political activism, denial of service attacks are neither a recent development, nor a particularly rare occurrence."

Three Hackers Arrested in Wake of DDOS Attacks December 13, 2010

"Authorities found the name of a designer named Alex Tapanaris embedded in a PDF press release purporting to come from the hacker group Anonymous. His site was later inaccessible and he was said to have been arrested. Several other people were arrested, said to be allied to Anonymous, in the Netherlands."

Wikileaks' Assange Wins TIME Person of Year Reader Poll - But Will the Editors Choose Him? December 13, 2010

"Julian Assange, leader of the whistle blower website Wikileaks, has won the reader's poll at TIME Magazine for Person of the Year in 2010, the magazine announced today."

What if Operation Anonymous Attacked City Infrastructures & Power Grids? December 14, 2010

"This month's online struggles between Wikileaks supporters participating in the ephemeral group called Anonymous and international corporations like Visa, Mastercard and PayPal, who have stopped allowing their customers to donate money to Wikileaks, have brought electronic disruptions like Distributed Denials of Service (DDOS) to the forefront of peoples' minds all over the world."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Named TIME's Person of the Year December 15, 2010

"Despite the fact that Wikileaks front man Julian Assange won TIME's reader poll for the magazine's Person of the Year 2010 feature, the editors ultimately picked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckberberg as the overall winner."

Support Writers, Publishers, Non-Profits (Yes, Including WikiLeaks) With Donations Via Flattr December 15, 2010

"The refusal by PayPal, Moneybookers, Mastercard, and Visa to process payments to WikiLeaks was clearly an effort to sever the organization's access to online financial resources. But there remains one way to donate online to WikiLeaks, via the Swedish startup Flattr."

Using WikiLeaks to Shape History as it Happens December 15, 2010

"(W)ill WikiLeaks bring us the transparency we need to be able to understand the internal workings of U.S. covert operations?"

What Mark Zuckerberg Told TIME About Wikileaks December 15, 2010

"So what does Zuckerberg have to say about the man who peeled back the curtain from the internal discussions among diplomats for history's most formidable empire? Not much."

Assange Banged OUT of the Tanty: This Week in Online Tyranny December 16, 2010

"Wikileaks boss Julian Assange was awarded bail this week but not initially released."

WikiLeaks.org Is Back Up... But Is It WikiLeaks? December 16, 2010

"It's unclear, however, exactly who's behind it and one Internet security site is saying that the site exists in 'a very dangerous neighborhood' of the Internet and is warning people not to visit it."

House Judiciary Committee Conducts Hearing on Wikileaks - Watch the Video December 16, 2010

"The House Judiciary Committee met today to discuss, among other things, Wikileaks and whether the organization and its boss Julian Assange have violated the United States Espionage Act."

Information Wants to Be Free, But the (Unofficial) WikiLeaks App Costs Extra December 19, 2010

"'Information wants to be free,' or so goes the slogan invoked a lot in relation to WikiLeaks. Information wants to be free - except when it's a WikiLeaks iPhone app apparently. Then it's $1.99."

Top 10 Culture of Tech Stories of 2010 December 20, 2010

"Wikileaks was not a story, but an ongoing continuum of stories. It started with release by the wiki-based whistle-blowing site in April of a video that seemed to show a U.S. helicopter gunship killing a number of Reuters journalists."

Watch How WikiLeaks' Mirrors Spread Around the World [Google Earth] December 20, 2010

"Now, Muller has taken this same data and plotted it over time, showing the viral replication of WikiLeaks from just a handful of mirrors to nearly 2,000 in just seven day's time."

Major Internet Incidents and Outages of 2010 December 21, 2010

"(T)he events surrounding WIkiLeaks have not merely interrupted the organization's website, as Amazon, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, EveryDNS and others have been targeted by DDoS attacks."

How OpenLeaks is Likely to Work December 21, 2010

"OpenLeaks will provide whistle-blowers a way to upload leaked documents and to send them to particular recipients, such as newspapers, news channels, radio stations, non profit organizations, labor unions, governmental oversight groups and others. OpenLeaks itself, unlike Wikileaks, will not publish the leaked documents on its site."

WikiLeaks App Yanked from App Store December 21, 2010

"The unofficial WikiLeaks app has been yanked from the Apple Store. The app was approved on Dec. 17, but yesterday developer Igor Barinov received word that the app was removed from sale."

Is This How Bank of America Is Preparing For the Next WikiLeaks Release? December 22, 2010

"In a defensive move, Bank of America now seems to be buying up domains for its senior executives and board members, including their names along with 'sucks' or 'blows.'"

Wikiriver: One Stop Shop For All Wikileaks Coverage December 22, 2010

"This week blogging and syndication trailblazer Dave Winer has launched a simple but invaluable service that centralizes all the coverage from all the major media outlets analyzing the Wikileaks cables."

Wikileaks' Leaks Leaked: Norwegian Paper Has All the Cables and None of the Restrictions December 22, 2010

"Unlike El Pais, The Guardian, Le Monde and Wikileaks' other media partners in past leaks, Aftenposten has no agreement requiring the organization's sign-off prior to publishing the leaks."

Bank of America Suffers DDoS Slowdowns December 27, 2010

"Bank of America was targeted by Anonymous because it joined other financial companies PayPal, Mastercard and Visa, in refusing to work with Wikileaks."

A Taste of Its Own Medicine? 4chan Down Due to DDoS Attack December 28, 2010

"Geekosystem editor Robert Quigley ponders who could be behind the attack, asking if it could be Tumblr users still hanging on to the Tumblr/4chan battle of earlier this year. Quiqley goes on to wonder if it could be the banks themselves acting in retaliation or even 4chan itself."

Amazon Web Services, WikiLeaks and the Elephant in the Room

"Amazon Web Services sent out a promotional email titled 'Amazon Web Services Year in Review.' Understandably, the email didn't mention one of the biggest AWS stories of the year: the company's decision to remove the WikiLeaks website from its servers."

WikiLeaks' Imitators Proliferate But Go Their Own Way: A Catalog of Clones December 29, 2010

"The contentious whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks has ruffled so many feathers that it's been shut down not just in the countries we think of as repressive, but in those we like to think are open. Because of that, mirror sites have proliferated. But accompanying the mirrors are clones."

FBI Raids Web Hosts Over Wikileaks Advocates' Operation Payback December 29, 2010

"The FBI has reportedly raided a Texas web host and worked with international authorities to search servers in pursuit of the anonymous leaders of the group Anonymous, who blocked the website of PayPal earlier this month in retribution to the company's decision to stop its customers from making donations to Wikileaks."

Leaked: Cuban Government Fears Bloggers More Than Activists December 29, 2010

"Reporters Without Borders reports that several diplomatic cables that have come out via Wikileaks indicate Cuba is more worried about bloggers than traditional activists."

As of two days ago, iReports had been filed from every single country in the world except one: Nauru. Neither Nauruan nor visitor had ever sent in a story or photo or video from that South Pacific nation.

On a blog post, the iReport team pleads with the inhabitants of the island to help them complete their "Global Challenge."

"Only Nauru is left! We want to hear from citizens of, or visitors to, this tiny island in the South Pacific, halfway between Australia and Hawaii. Send us a snapshot of life in Nauru -- the local culture, food, architecture, natural sites, or an unusual event happening there."

Today, Nauru came through. San Franciscan Lee Miller dropped some shots he had taken during a 2008 trip the country.

The value of leveraging readers as reporters is their distribution on-site all around the world. How many people would have known about Nauru without both the curiosity of Miller and the muscle of CNN?

"'It's a really sad story because it wasn't that long ago that Nauruans were driving around in Ferraris. ... It used to be one of the richest countries in the world,' Miller said.

But there was a lot more about the country waiting to be seen. Miller recalled "breathtaking scenery" and touching moments with locals. The owner of the island's only hotel noticed him wearing a Barack Obama T-shirt and insisted on paying for the rest of his stay. Another time, when he got sick, a Nauruan bus driver who worked at the hotel took him to a store and bought him medicine."

Citizen journalism grew in tandem with the growth of blogging and other social media tools. There has been a lot of shaking-out in the past few years as it's veered from a curiosity to the salvation of journalism to a point of fact. To be able to say, "Tell me what you see!" and get an answer is the real fruit of citizen journalism.

From iReports to companies like Demotix, Now Public and AllVoices to blogs and Facebook pages, it looks like that dynamic has found roots in our experience of news.

In counting the world's countries, CNN has used the U.S. State Department's list of independent countries. This list has 194 countries, of which iReports have been filed from 193.

Meanwhile, as Mahalo's legal troubles begin, CEO Calacanis is preparing to launch a new project, itself called "Launch," which aims to be a direct challenger to TechCrunch.

The Mahalo Class-Action

According to news posted on Accentuate in mid-September, and more recently on blog sites Pulse2 and The Next Web, the potential Mahalo lawsuit involves disputes surrounding a change to the site's terms, which now give the company ownership of the content published on Mahalo.com. Prior to the change, the writers also owned the content. This change angered some of the site's users, who are now attempting to sue the company.

The law firm of Green Welling, LLP is currently gathering information from affected writers and attempting to get a class-certified suit underway.

Mahalo employees and contractors interested in participating in the suit are being asked for any "information, documentation, screen captures, emails, other communications or experiences with Mahalo.com," notes Accentuate Services, a blog dedicated to freelancing and fiction writing. The site is maintained by Michelle L. Devon, one of the injured parties, and now the plaintiff in the suit. Those joining her can remain anonymous through attorney-client privilege, she says.

The details of the case itself are not currently being discussed, but it involves revenue sharing disputes and intellectual property law from our understanding of the matter. Devon was previously seen commenting on this thread on Mahalo Answers, the Q&A sub-section of the search site. Additional discussion is also available online in dedicated forum sites both here and here.

Note: Mahalo has not yet responded to our request for comment regarding the suit. We will update this post if we hear back.Update: Mahalo's official comment: "We're not going to speculate on rumors of lawsuits. However, our terms of service have been and continue to be clear. We've always operated under Creative Commons. Under the prior terms of service, the writers owned the content and provided Mahalo with a license to use it. Now that we compensate writers with bi-weekly cash payments, we amended the terms so that we own the content and provide the writers a creative commons license to use elsewhere if they choose. Bottom line is that Mahalo is pro-writer, as evidenced by our substantial and ever-growing investment in quality content. Our Mahalo Guides and Gurus are talented, passionate, creative contributors who are the lifeblood of the site. Writers interested in sharing their passions with a huge audience of readers should not hesitate to apply."

Calacanis Working on TechCrunch Competitor Called "Launch"

As the different parties investigate a potential suit against Mahalo, it seems Calacanis has a new project. According to an article in today's Guardian, the entrepreneur is now investing in an editorial startup called Launch.

Launch will take on TechCrunch, says Calacanis, but with more of a focus on "quality and insight," he says. "When I started with [Engadget founder, and Joystiq, Gizmodo and Hackaday co-founder] Peter Rojas, blogging was a new format that was faster but still had quality and insight," he said. "Now it's even faster but it has lost that quality and insight. You have a bunch of people writing short stuff with no research and knowledge base. They have no credibility."

Launch won't offer news via blog posts, as TechCrunch does, though. It will be provided as an email newsletter - the same format where Calacanis's own deeper insights disappeared to back in 2008.

"If you get people to commit to an email relationship, it's the deepest, most intimate relationship you can have online. Much deeper than Facebook and certainly more intimate than a blog," he told the Guardian.

Do Bloggers Lack Credibility?

As bloggers ourselves, it's hard to not be stung by words like his. Bloggers lack credibility? Ouch.

But blogging, let's remember, is just a format for publishing content. Anyone can blog, from mainstream journalists to uninformed amateurs. That's the power and the beauty of the platform, in fact. Who exactly is Calacanis speaking about when he makes comments like these?

Besides, today's blog readers are now savvier than ever, often interacting with writers through comment forms and on the social networks Twitter and Facebook, which he summarily dismissed. Commenters add their thoughts to posted stories, expressing their support or agreement, pointing out mistakes or offering different opinions or opposing points of views.

While an email newsletter will arguably have a highly engaged audience, as Calacanis says, it's hardly positioned as a direct competitor to TechCrunch, or any other top-tier news site, blog or otherwise.

But that's just my opinion, as a lowly blogger.

In the comments (or elsewhere), you can share yours. That's how this works, folks. And we like it.

Photo by Joi Ito.

Using OpenStreetMap (that thing is fast becoming the phlogiston of social entrepreneurship), the 170,070 inhabitants of this slum adjacent to Kenya's capital Nairobi have rewritten the nation's official maps and in doing so, have made their own recognition a fait accompli.

Kenya is a place of great moment in public use of social media. Aside from being the birthplace of the Ushahidi crisis mapping tool (ReadWriteWeb coverage here), it has also passed through a particularly successful election season that gave the country a new constitution and in which social media and the mobile Web were particularly prominent.

Social media gave the people of Kibera a way of insisting they not just be serviced by their government but recognized by the country as a whole. Why is summed up in the Map Kibera wiki.

"Kibera was literally a blank spot on the map, its patterns of traffic, scarce water resources, limited medial facilities, etc. remain invisible to the outside world, and residents themselves. Without basic knowledge of the geography of Kibera it is impossible to have an informed discussion on how to improve the lives of residents of Kibera."

Though the project was defined and funding found by Erica Hagen and Mikel Maron, a core group of about 30 Kibera locals mapped streets, public buildings and more. In the wake of a flood this last May, Reuters AlertNet notes, the Map Kibera folks were able to quickly create a map that showed which areas were under water. The dynamic, user-updated map also helps service professionals and NGOs like the Red Cross respond to needs occasioned by the area's constant fires.

The latest step for the group is a citizen reporting site called Voice of Kibera. VoK aggregates the mapping information from Map Kibera and elsewhere, as well as streaming in SMS reports on Kibera news from locals and collects area news from other sources.

We'd love to hear of any other examples you can think of in which acts of location have helped people to become more fully present in their worlds.

Part of the whistle-blower site's notoriety has always been negative. In the wake of the Afghanistan document release even some activist organizations indicted the group for irresponsible treatment of information. That information included the identities of military personnel and Afghan civilian workers. Former Wikileak workers fear the same thing will happen, but on a larger scale, with the Iraq information.

Wired.com's Threat Level blog reports that Assange intends an October release of 392,000 classified documents from Iraq.

Although based on the wiki platform, Wikileaks does not come off as hewing to the wiki philosophy of editorial collaboration and aggregate decision-making. Assange has acted as boss more than primus inter pares. Last month he effected, apparently with no collaboration or consultation, a media review of the Iraq documents. When asked to consider taking more time to more carefully redact the Iraq documents, Assange refused.

Among the dozen so far who've jumped ship are Herbert Snorrason, who ran Wikileaks' secure chat room; and Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Wikileaks' German spokesman.

Threat Level quotes Assange from an article on Domscheit-Berg in German magazine Der Spiegel.

"I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier and all the rest. If you have a problem with me, piss off."

Assange has spent time hiding out from theoretical pursuers from the U.S. and fending off sexual assault charges in Sweden. The roguish whiff of vainglory and entitlement may be better suited to a media mogul than a would-be latter-day Daniel Ellsberg. You have to wonder how the organization and its site will fare if Assange continues to occupy the sole driver's seat.

Bradley Manning, an Army Pfc. was been arrested in May by U.S. military police. He faces two misconduct charges for allegedly sharing the Iraq documents with Wikileaks.

Assange photo from New Media Days

Much like past direct-to-candidate experiments, users are invited to submit videos of their questions for any of Iraq's leaders.

Al Arabiya will be doing a series of interviews with the political leadership of Iraq and asking some of the questions submitted by participants.

"Al Arabiya and YouTube will pose the top-voted questions to Iraqi leaders in a series of Interviews with sitting Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, Prime Minister of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, Barham Salih, and others."

Although Al Arabiya is a pan-Arabic network, anyone can submit questions.

The deadline to submit questions is September 27.

Launched in 2003, the Dubai-based Al Arabiya was founded as a competitor to Al Jazeera. The latter has a strong political slant, which inflects its coverage of war and terrorism. Al Arabiya's Director, Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, told the New York Times that his network used neutral terminology to replace what he considered inflammatory terms.

If you leave a video question for Iraq's leadership on Iraq Looks Forward, we would welcome a link to it in our comments.