Mobile TV Gets a Push - VivaCell-MTS Plans 4G Launch by End of Year

Armenia's top mobile operator may be planning to strengthen its Mobile TV service with the launch of LTE/Long Term Evolution network by the end of year, bringing us the latest standard in mobile network technology.
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Small Change -- Why the revolution will not be tweeted

At four-thirty in the afternoon on Monday, February 1, 1960, four college students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. They were freshmen at North Carolina A. & T., a black college a mile or so away.

“I’d like a cup of coffee, please,” one of the four, Ezell Blair, said to the waitress.

“We don’t serve Negroes here,” she replied.

The Woolworth’s lunch counter was a long L-shaped bar that could seat sixty-six people, with a standup snack bar at one end. The seats were for whites. The snack bar was for blacks. Another employee, a black woman who worked at the steam table, approached the students and tried to warn them away.

“You’re acting stupid, ignorant!” she said. They didn’t move.

Around five-thirty, the front doors to the store were locked. The four still didn’t move. Finally, they left by a side door. Outside, a small crowd had gathered, including a photographer from the Greensboro Record.
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Na/Ne annual media competition to promote gender-aware coverage

The Na/Ne media award

Journalists working in Armenia are eligable to apply for the Na/Ne annual media competition, which seeks to promote professional and responsible coverage of woman issues and gender equality.
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A Day's worth of World Air Traffic in 2 minutes

The video is a 24 hour observation of the movement of all the large aircraft flights in the world, condensed down to about 2 minutes.
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Thoughts on recent transformations of Armenian blogosphere

The growing influence of social networks, especially Facebook, has triggered discussions around the future of the Armenian blogosphere.
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Firefox remains top browser in Armenia, Chrome catches up with IE

Firefox remains the top browser in Armenia,  StatCounter.com data for Aug 09 to Aug 10

With 43.34% market-share, Firefox has remained the top browser in Armenia this year, while Google Chrome displayed impressive growth rates reaching 19.82% and threatening to overtake Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which is currently second with a modest 23.35%.
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Future of Screen Technology

This is the result of TAT's Open Innovation experiment. It is an experience video showing the future of screen technology with stretchable screens, transparent screens and e-ink displays, to name a few.

Via Arxymond

700% growth in Armenia’s internet penetration rate

YEAR	Users	Population	% Pen.	GDP p.c.*	Source
2000	30,000	3,002,594	0.1 %	US$ 410	ITU
2001	40,000	3,000,164	0.5 %	US$ 500	ITU
2006	161,000	2,950,060	5.5 %	US$ 2,853	ITU
2008	172,800	2,968,586	5.8 %	US$ 3,685	ITU
2009	191,000	2,967,004	6.4 %	US$ 2,668	ITU
2010	1,396,550	2,966,802	47.1 %	US$ 2,506	PSRC

Usage of internet has literally burst in the course of one year – with the internet penetration rate rising a mighty 700%, according to latest data published by the Internet World Stats (ITU), a specialized website which provides internet usage and population statistics around the world.
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Winners of international "Hrant Dink" award announced

Anniversary of Hrant Dink's murder in Istanbul, 19Jan2008 (c) Artur Papyan

On September 15 in Istanbul at the concert hall "Cemal Rasit Rey" the award ceremony of nominees of Hrant Dink International Award 2010 was held. The Award winners are: "Conscientious Objection Movement" Turkish anti-militarist organization and Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, the first national judge exercising the universal jurisdiction.
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UK's blogging Ambassador and VIP blogging in Armenia

Charles Lonsdale, British Ambassador to Armenia has started a blog, which he hopes to use to write about what the Embassy does, as well as "about some of the issues we don’t get to talk about so much in the media."
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Top Ten Social Networks in Armenia

World Map of Social Networks from Vincos.it, click to enlarge

Most World Maps of Social Networks ignore Armenia or display wrong information. No wonder - we're such a small country with insignificant internet use. However, understanding the use and dynamics of social networks in Armenia is vital for media businesses, advertisers, social marketers, in order to grab the opportunities and come closer to their users.
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Geeks in Armenia celebrate Programmer's day

Programmer Day is the 256th day of every year, September 13th or the 12th on leap years. 256 is the perfect 8th power and a byte can have 256 possible values. Bytes, as you might already know, are very important to programmers. I have no idea - why.
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Armenian Journalists face Deportation threat from Turkey

Turkey's border security guards threatened to deport journalists from Armenia who had arrived in Istanbul's Ataturk airport for a Sept. 13–15 seminar on the role of media in improving cooperation and security in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and in the region.

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Social Networking and Conflict Resolution?

I'm reposting this great post from Global Chaos mostly not to forget it.

I’m sure the fact that Azeris, Turks, and Armenians keep hacking each other’s (usually official) websites is not news to most of my readers (in principle, at least). What was news to me, however, was the idea of hacking an individual’s social networking and email accounts.

Last weekend, as I opened my Facebook homepage, here’s what I saw (click on the images to enlarge):


Nareg is a “global Armenian” in the true sense of the word: patriotic but also skeptical, very open minded, and certainly not of the chauvinist type. I should say, I particularly enjoy following his “links” feed on Facebook, as he usually shares insightful articles, raises interesting questions and, often, facilitates engaging “comment discussions.” In short, such an unexpected diatribe of abuse obviously raised a red flag.
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Armenia's IT competitiveness rating "plunges further"

Competitiveness indicators of the information technologies sector in Armenia worsened sharply this year, according to a global competitiveness survey, despite government's bid to make the country a regional IT hub.
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GALA TV's equipment broken by Prime Minister's Bodyguard

"GALA" TV's logo

Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan's spokesperson has offered an apology and announced that the loss of "GALA" TV company would be compensated, following an incident involving PM's bodyguard and a TV journalist during Sargsyan's September 7 visit to Artik town of Shirak region.

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Google Instant not available in Armenia yet, do not be alarmed!

Google Instant search showing results for the search word Yerevan,
with a lovely "Welcome to Google Instant" note that reads:
"Feeling of euphoria and weightlessness are normal.
Do not be alarmed"

Google has started rolling out instant search. It is not available for Google.am yet, but I tested it on Google.com and was quite excited.
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Is Google Making Us Stupid?

"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial “ brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”

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Azerbaijani hackers attack Henaran.am

Azerbaijani hackers attacked Henaran.am website last night. Henaran's visitors were surprised this morning after reading the sentence "We shall never forget Mübariz İbrahimov" on the black background of the main page.

Mübariz İbrahimo was an Azeri serviceman who died during the recent Azerbaijani diversion along the contact line of NKR and Azerbaijani armed forces.

The technical problem is already addressed and the website has resumed its ordinary routine.

In a statement issued after restoring the Henaran.am website, the page's editorial team said this is the second such attack

Source: A1+

The Cost of Cyber-Nationalism

Turkish hackers are infamous (try a simple Google news search), Russia is regarded as cyber-criminal haven, and Azerbaijan and Armenia are known for mutual cyber-attacks (what one might call ‘nagorno cyber attacks’).

Web surfers in all these four countries lose at the end.

According to SPAMfighter, “Internet security company AVG Technologies has revealed that web surfers in Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia are most likely to face risks while online.”

One argument is that internet vulnerability ultimately means stronger security – the more you are attacked, the better protection you seek.

But is this a reasonable price for the people of Armenia and Azerbaijan, technically at war over Nagorno-Karabakh and clearly responsibly, in part, for the risks in both countries, to pay?
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There Are No More Cyberdissidents

Shouldn’t we stop using the prefix “cyber”? This post on RFE/RL's blog says we should, and it may have a case. Read more »

Seven more digital broadcast licensing competitions announced in Armenia

Armenia's National Commission on Television and Radio (NCTR) has announced 7 additional competitions for acquiring TV broadcast licenses through digital network.
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Passenger: Armenian-Azerbaijani cross-border documentary [RU]

Пассажир from eurasiaam on Vimeo.

This is a short documentary film made by Armenian and Azerbaijani journalists, Christina Vardanian and Framan Nabiyev. The film was produced withing the framework of the Eurasia Parnership Foundation's Media Bias project, which seeks to promote conflict resolution and eliminate bias in the media.
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Telecom attracts bulk of investment into Armenian economy

More than 47% of all direct investment into the Armenian economy has flown into the telecommunications sector, amounting to $ 109 million US in the first half of this year, according to Armenian State Statistical Service.
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Media Landscape - Armenia

The most recent history of Armenia needs to be quickly recapitulated as it provides the framework to understanding the state of the media. In 1992 a war started in the Karabakh region, the Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. Armenia supported the Karabakhi people in their self-determination movement and became a party in the conflict. In response Azerbaijan blockaded the only operating transport connection between Armenia and the rest of the world. Turkey joined Azerbaijan in closing its borders from the west. Land locked, Armenia had to rely only on its other two neighbours, Georgia and Iran, with whom it did not have any transport infrastructures. In addition, environmentalists closed the only major energy resource of Armenia, the nuclear station. Moreover, most of the factories stopped due to the collapse of the over-integrated structure of soviet industry.

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Media and Technology in Armenia

Mark Belinkski, a friend, who describes himself as a "nomad exploring tech for civic engagement, digital literacy education and interactive media around the world" has published a short 6-page report, which gives a snapshot of IT, Media and Digital Democracy situation in Armenia in 2009. Check it out, might prove useful.
Digital Democracy Armenia Report 2009

Armenia's rebel TV goes live again

Armenia’s leading independent television station has officially started live broadcasting through the Internet for the first time in 8 years after being controversially pulled off the air by the authorities.
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A cyber-house divided

Online as much as in the real world, people bunch together in mutually suspicious groups—and in both realms, peacemaking is an uphill struggle

Sep 2nd 2010 | WASHINGTON, DC

IN 2007 Danah Boyd heard a white American teenager describe MySpace, the social network, as “like ghetto or whatever”. At the time, Facebook was stealing members from MySpace, but most people thought it was just a fad: teenagers tired of networks, the theory went, just as they tired of shoes.

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