Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Technology: RSS beats censorship


Back to blogging! I say an enormous thank you to John and Bill for blogging here during my holidays. It was really great to read their ideas on my blog; it makes me realize how much a one person blog is written from one -your own- perspective. It stimulates me to ask more guest bloggers and do more interviews, as my topic is communities of practice for development and I have blind spots (like we all do).

In China, I tried to access my blog from 3 different cybercafes, a hotel and a home connection, but I couldn't access it. It makes me think it may be censored (like the BBC :)). Though it would be nice to think that the chinese are scared of the immense influence of my blog, it may rather be the use of the words Tibet and China in this blogpost, as my friend had accessed my blog earlier on from China.

But good news (or bad news for censors): I was able to read all my RSS feeds (even the BBC) and I could even add my blog to bloglines. But ofcourse I couldn't comment. So spread RSS in China! (otherwise I miss out 1.3 billion readers...)

NB picture is me and my children climbing the wall. Unfortunately we have seen Beijing only in a dense fog, which only became denser by the day, so I wonder if it will not disappear completely from the world in one big mist.

2 comments:

John David Smith said...

RSS has its limitations! The feed I just got from your post ended with these words: "practice for development and I have blind spots (like we"

At least the RSS feed teased me into coming and reading your whole post.

Thanks for the opportunity to practice blogging! I'm trying to take up the habit!

Joitske said...

Sure, the BBC feeds also end with read further... (and then if you click to the site we couldn't access it either). But in bloglines it's an option to set it at full blogpost or just an intro.

By the way, at certain TV items from BBC the screen just turned blank, that's at least a very transparent way of censorship.