Hungarian community news site takes on neglected fire hydrants

Dávid Fáber is the founder of nagykovácsi.net [hu], a community news site of Nagykovácsi, a small town in Hungary’s Pest County. The fire that broke out on March 28 on the local Kutya mountain mobilized not only the firefighters, but users of nagykovacsi.net’s forum as well. Below is the interview with Mr. Fáber, who started the Nagykovácsi Citizen Fire Hydrant Task Force. Read More »

Uzbekistan cuts cell, Internet services during national exam

Uzbekistan authorities have ordered mobile operators to cut off Internet, text, and image messaging services to prevent students from cheating during the entry exams to universities on 1 August, writes RIA Novosti. Read More »

Georgian blogger leads online charity campaign

Givi Avaliani is among the few bloggers in Georgia who rarely write about personal experience and instead focus on online campaigns and charity activities in Georgia in the country. He lives in Kutaisi, which is second largest city in the country.
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Wiretapping increases across the EU and beyond

Wiretapping and retention of users’ data by government agencies has increased across Europe in the last years. The trend has been thoroughly analyzed in a report by the European Commission. Read More »

Kazakh Wikipedia awarded for its impressive development

Kazakh Wikipedia has received an award at the annual Wikimania conference, which was held this year in Washington DC. The conference recognized Kazakhstan’s success in the development and improvement of its national division of Wikipedia, the biggest online encyclopedia, writes Caspionet.kz. Read More »

No signal for millions of Uzbek mobile phone users

Uzbekistan has suspended Russian telecommunication company MTS’s license for 10 days on 17 July. The authorities accused the company of “numerous and systematic violations,” of its contractual obligations, according to Reuters. Read More »

Cyberactivism branches out beyond just politics in Belarus

Social networks dealing with local issues is hardly anything new, but in Belarus they tend to focus exclusively on politics. (an example of the latter is the revolution, organized through social networks, that rocked the streets of Minsk in the summer 2011).

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Social Innovation Camp coming back to Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan will soon host its third Social Innovation Camp. This time, the Eurasian Partnership Foundation has announced a new format for the event.

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Skype gets an Uzbek interface, helps bridge digital divide

The world’s most popular IP telephony and text messenger application now has an Uzbek interface thanks to an Uzbek blogger. Skype, which is not an open source platform, and whose official list of available languages had not been updated with the new language versions in almost two years, still permits anyone to extract the language file and localize the interface. Read More »

Moldovans turn to social media to stop exam cheating

Cheating on high school graduation exams is a common practice in Moldova. Sadly, the practice is widespread and tacitly accepted by Moldovan society. In a way, exams are seen more as a game of survival, with the highest grades going to the people best able to handle the exam and not necessarily the ones who studied more. Read More »

In Russia, Internet eclipsing TV in popularity

It was bound to happen at some point.

In Russia, it now seems the Internet is a more popular source of information than TV – sort of. Read More »

Who’s afraid of Macedonians?

A recent YouTube ad campaign funded by the Macedonian government and meant to teach people how to behave with tourists upset many Macedonians through its style, Balkan Insight writes. The seven one-minute clips that went viral after being posted last week present several “Macedonian endemic species” including a bed-and-breakfast owner, an “alpha male,” a taxi driver, a waiter, and a market vendor, each behaving in a rude an unwelcoming way. Read More »

Soap operas find online niche in Azerbaijan

In Azerbaijan, soap operas are mainly aimed at housewives and elderly people. But recent changes applied to TV regulation in the country have made them popular with young Internet users as well. Although a recent talk show on the subject of one particular show has sparked an online debate. Read More »

Crowdfunding offers lifeboat to Georgians

The crowdfunding fad has now made its way to Georgia and seems to have some potential. Launched just a few weeks ago, borani.org already has almost 300 contributors funding 21 projects; together, they’ve pledged 9,193 GEL ($5,650). Read More »