25 April 2008

Here's how a mildly funny blog post about fictional Google OneBoxen triggered a big spike on Wednesday in people searching for the phrases "Things Rick Astley would never do" and "Cure for fever". (The answers being "give you up" and "more cowbell" respectively.)

In other news, a shift this week in the language used to talk about terrorism. Less of the "jihad", recommended the US National Counterterrorism Center in March. The State Department's now approved the recommendations issued by the NCTC division ambiguously named the Extremist Messaging Branch.

And finally, from the journal First Monday, a paper on social networking as "participatory surveillance" - prompting us to consider a kind of surveillance that's "potentially empowering, subjectivity building and even playful".

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