An Egyptian blogger has gone to trial on the charges of insulting Islam in his blog.

Abdel Kareem Nabil often denounced Islamic authorities and criticized Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on his Arabic-language blog. He has been in detention since November and faces up to nine years in prison if convicted.

This is not the first time a blogger has been arrested for having a liberal and pro-democracy point of view. While others were simply released without formal charges, this is the first time an arrested blogger has been put on trial. Egypt has been heavily criticized in the past by human rights groups for such arrests.

In Thursday’s court session, Abdel Kareem Nabil was charged with the inciting sedition, insulting Islam, harming national unity and insulting the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak.

The Assyrian International News Agency has more.

Originally posted on January 20, 2007 @ 3:22 pm

Wikipedia has implemented a new system to prevent malicious users from vandalizing the site. The new measures are being called ‘Cascading protection’ and work as follows:

If a page is protected using the feature, any pages included in it will also be protected for as long as they remain included in it. This protection should take effect instantly and automatically even if templates are included dynamically by a mechanism such as that used by the Main Page. Administrators can enable cascading protection by means of a checkbox on the usual protection form.

Wikipedia’s main page (among other pages) has long been a target of vandalism and hopefully this will put an end to that.

Originally posted on January 19, 2007 @ 9:04 am

In response to a bill currently being considered by Congress, Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of Grassroots Freedom, had the following to say:

Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the Senate, would require grassroots causes, even bloggers, who communicate to 500 or more members of the public on policy matters, to register and report quarterly to Congress the same as the big K Street lobbyists.

The bill, which according to the organization, allows the government to regulates small, legitimate nonprofits, bloggers, and individuals, but at the same time leaves loopholes for unions, and other large organizations and corporations, is being labeled as one that makes exercising your First Amendment rights a crime.

A petition to stop this bill can be accessed here, and more information is available at here.

Originally posted on January 17, 2007 @ 5:50 pm

Apple’s long-awaited unveiling of the iPhone overshadowed pretty much every other piece of technology information coming out at the same time. One of those, was Nokia’s new flagship blogging device, the N93i.

Nokia struck a partnership with blog hosting company Six Apart Ltd. to make it easy for N93i users to upload voice and video to the company’s Vox blogging service.

The device is set for release before summer 2007, with a price tag of $780.

You can learn more about the phone from Nokia’s website, or head over to WOM World for a video review.

Originally posted on January 17, 2007 @ 6:11 pm