-Prof. Z was elected to the Internet Society’s board of trustees for a three-year term. The Internet Society is an international nonprofit organisation founded in 1992 to “provide leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy.”

- For those who missed it, the audio of the interview featured on WNPR (April 30) on “What’s Next For the World Wide Web?” is up on the web!

-The Zittrain Twitter feed has been added to the site. Of course, you can always follow the professor directly through Twitter if you set up your own account (it’s free).

-Prof. Z participated in a workshop hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School titled “Cultures in Common: 50 Years of Reflection on Science, Technology, and Society” on May 8. He spoke about “Ordering the Wild Frontier: The Cultures of the Internet”

-Z was in London on May 19 to deliver a lecture on “The Future of the Internet: Private Sheriffs in Cyberspace” for the Society for Computers and Law.

Coming up…

-Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Cluetrain Manifesto, Prof. Z will talk with Cluetrain authors Doc Searls and David Weinberger at Harvard Law School  on June 16. The event is open to the public. More info here.

-Z will deliver the keynote “Future of Video and How to Stop It” on June 20 at the Open Video Conference in New York.

April 7: The Harvard Law School News reports on Prof.Z’s talk at the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center’s 20^th Anniversary Technical Symposium at Carnegie MellonUniv.

April 13: Prof. Z talks to PayPal and Clarium Capital founder Peter Thiel about whether monopolies can save the Internet. Click here for video.

April 15: Prof. Z interviews Daniel Hoffer, Founder and Chairman of CouchSurfing. Click here for video.

April 19: “In a down economy, one might surf for an hour rather than spend $15 at a multiplex,” Z says in Cnet article on online piracy.

April 22: Interview (podcast) on Command Line. (updated 4/23)

April 28: Discussing the Wolfram Alpha demo with Stephen Wolfram (updated April 29)

* Here is a new video with Prof. Z navigating the screen and explaining how to use Herdict.

* Helping us get the word of Herdict out to the herd-at-large, Shep has taken on some impressive language skills (and more impressive gender changes) to promote Herdict in a number of different languages for the Berkman YouTube channel.

Currently videos are available in Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Malagasy, Italian, Hindi, and Korean. Also, we have a growing library of subtitled versions available on dotSUB , which includes Arabic, Bengali, Danish, Flemish, French, Hungarian, Russian, Portugese, Castilian, and Indonesian, just to name a few. For those who missed it, here is the original video.

-yvette wohn

* On NPR’s On the Media, Prof. Z talks about the future of the internet and security issues

* Z introduces  Herdict on the World Technology Podcast 234, Air Mozilla (Media player available on Air Mozilla’s website), and Radio Berkman.

-yvette wohn

As the problem of viruses, spyware, and other forms of “badware” increase, so has the the need for a central place where people with no prior knowledge about badware and its effects could go to ask questions and get assistance on the topic. BadwareBusters.org aims to fill that gap by attracting a community consisting of everyone from computer novices to technology experts. Users can browse, search, join, and start conversation topics and to rate other users’ contributions. A reputation and rating system helps people identify the most useful topics and the most helpful users.

-Yvette Wohn

Speaking at the Berkman Center earlier this year before the official launch of Herdict, Prof. Z described Herdict’s potential as being a real-time tool for mapping web filtering activities around the world. “Should it start producing a map of filtering as it happens, I think it will have a major impact,” he said.

Several weeks into the official launch, people are using Herdict to monitor website blockages around the world– and not just because they’re bored.

As the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising in China (and one-year anniversary of the Tibet riots) draws near, bloggers are pointing out increased inaccessibility in China of U.S.-based web services such as Twitter and Youtube, using Herdict data that shows statistical trends and information of the IP addresses where the blockage is happening (examples here and here). One blogger used Herdict data to create a visual representation of accessibility within China on a political map.

Of course one could find information about web blockage of YouTube in China on Twitter or in discussion forums, which reflects personal experiences. Herdict, however, aggregates that data from a self-reporting crowd and presents it in a manner that makes it easy to analyze trends.

I know this all sounds great, but what happens when China wants to block Herdict for reporting which sites are getting blocked? Z hopes that in the near future, the concept of knowing which sites are accessible or not will be something people take for granted.

Think of something that starts as inane as you can imagine. Herdict doesn’t get much more inane than Twitter or Wikipedia, where months later you say “How do we ever get on without this?” I would like to see this in that category, that provides a momentum onto itself–  now that it’s invented, it’s too good of an idea so that if you shut it down, someone else is going to write it. My idea is that when that is established, it’s obvious that this is part of the functioning Internet– to know where you can get to and why.

Snowfall in Cambridge is keeping people at home but perfectly illustrates situations that can be solved with ubiquitous human computing. Prof. Z discusses this concept of using remote human resources in a recent interview with Nokia’s Ideas Project. Cheap networks, he says, enables organizations to get things done regardless of location. Bad news for those who enjoyed sleeping in on a Monday morning.

Prof. Z’s working paper on ubiquitous human computing can be found here.

Jonathan Zittrain’s brainchild Herdict was officially released today. (Watch the project’s mascot — a sheep — demonstrate “the verdict of the herd” in a short video… does its voice sound familiar?)

Herdict is a tool that employs the distributed power of the Internet community to provide insight into what users around the world are experiencing in terms of web accessibility. People can participate by reporting websites that they cannot access, testing sites that others have reported, or downloading the browser add-on for reporting sites on the fly.

Herdict is a portmanteau of ‘herd’ and ‘verdict.’ Using Herdict Web, anyone anywhere can report websites as accessible or inaccessible. Herdict Web aggregates reports in real time, permitting participants to see if inaccessibility is a shared problem, giving them a better sense of potential reasons for why a site is inaccessible. Trends can be viewed over time, by site and by country.

Herdict Web builds out from the OpenNet Initiative‘s research on global Internet filtering. The OpenNet Initiative tests Internet filtering through an academic methodology. Herdict Web takes a different approach, crowdsourcing reports to learn about and display a real-time picture of user experiences around the globe.

Watch Prof. Z discussing Herdict Web at a recent Berkman luncheon, or listen to a podcast of Herdict on Radio Berkman.

Celebrating the first anniversary of its publication, The Future of the Internet- And How to Stop It will be available in paperback on March 15, making it easier for those who want to read on the go. The book can also be downloaded to the Kindle for $16.50 and is available for free on this web site.

With Internet security issues getting hotter and hotter, our cyber scholar is in high demand.

On March 12, Prof. Z will be giving a luncheon talk at the CERT Technical Symposium at Carnegie Mellon Univ. The theme of this year’s symposium is “Security Challenges in an Evolving World.” On March 14, he will be flying out to Texas and joining other Internet experts at SXSW Interactive. His presentation/panel is titled “Civic technologies and the Future of the Internet.”

Assuming that most people who visit this site are interested in the thoughts of Jonathan Zittrain, I will try to keep readers up to date on the latest JZ-related news. (Those who wish to see more random updates of our cyber professor may want to follow him on Twitter.)

On Feb. 18, the Berkman Center will be screening “Secrecy“, a film about the vast, invisible world of government secrecy, which will be followed by a roundtable discussion with the directors Peter Galison and Robb Moss, featuring Harvard Law Professors Jack Goldsmith, Martha Minow, and Jonathan Z. The two-hour event is open to the public and starts at 5pm at Ames Courtroom in Austin Hall, with soda and popcorn provided. More details here.

On Feb. 28, Prof. Z will be going to Mountain View, CA, to participate in a panel for “The Impact of Information Technology on Society,” a symposium hosted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The panel, titled “Alternative Futures of the Internet: Fears and Optimism,” includes David Clark (MIT), Cynthia Dwork (Microsoft), and Hal Varian (Google). Proceedings will later be available at the Academy’s web site and in print.