• Spain | Net Neutrality: a controversy that needs a political intervention?
  In Spain there's lot of talking about Internet business models and the neutrality of the operators that provide the connectivity infrastructure. And things might change quickly, according to what César Alierta, president of the telco Telefónica, declared last month: "Clearly, Internet search engines use our networks without paying anything, which is lucky for them and a curse for us. But that can not continue, we are the networks (...), we do it all. That will change, I believe it”.
  But some public servants don't seem to agree: Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra, former president of the Spanish region of Extremadura, wrote an op-ed on El País, asking the government and politicians to work on the controversial topic.

Wondering what's going in European techpolitics? Starting today, PDF Europe will tell you more - three days a week!
Links and suggestions are welcome both by email and on twitter.
(thanks to Nancy Scola).

EU | Are you ready for (y)EU?
Julien Frisch introduces the Web Communications team of the European Parliament.

"Getting your work published used to require jumping many hurdles; now it [requires] next to nothing," writes Scott Rosenberg, cofounder of Salon, about how blogging broke down the barriers of traditional journalism.

Today, blogs compete with traditional media to be the place where journalism's "most knowledgeable practitioners and most creative students are doing their hardest thinking."

And while blogging may be considered old hat in Silicon Valley, Rosenberg told Wired, its golden age is far from over.

Thursday, Aug 6th at the PdF Network
Journalists and Bloggers: Navigating the Changing Media Landscape
1-2 p.m. EST

Join the call!

This Thursday, Scott Rosenberg, co-founder Salon.com & author of Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters talks about the origins of blogging and how technology is shaping the future of political reporting and commentary.

Join the call!

Check out our upcoming PdF Network calls...

Solana Larsen is a Danish-Puerto Rican journalist and activist in New York. Currently, she works as the managing editor of GlobalVoicesOnline.org. Prior to that, She was an editor with the global politics website OpenDemocracy.net for five years. At the time of the Iranian presidential elections in 2005, she worked was the editor of Iran Scan 1384, a blog about Iranian politics in English. In addition to her work a GlobalVoicesOnline.org, Solana writes freelance for the web and radio. She earned her MA in International Journalism from City University in London. 

Solana has covered the UN Summit in 2005, and from the World Social Forum in 2006, UN Commission on the Status of Women in 2007.  In 2004, she co-founded The World Speaks, a blog that kept track of non-American online campaigns about US politics. She travels extensively, and has taught a postgraduate journalism class about illegal immigration at New York University in 2005. She founded PuertoDansk: The Danish-Puerto Rican Society. She also blogs in Danish about technology with her father Dan at Blogbyblog.dk.

Hear what Solana Larsen has to say about the Iranian election story, and why she thinks the AP wire should contact her.

PdF Chat Time, new feature here at Personal Democracy Forum, gives you a behind the scenes glimpse into the lives of the politechnorati. Hear what inspires them, what keeps them up at night, and who throws the wildest parties. Get informed by the most knowledgeable players in the world of politics and technology.

This interview was conducted on at 9:00am June 16th and has been edited for clarity.

Welcome to PdF Chat Time, a new feature here at Personal Democracy Forum. PdF Chat Time gives you a behind the scenes glimpse into the lives of the politechnorati. Hear what inspires them, what keep them up at night, and who throws the wildest parties. Get informed by the most knowledgeable players in the world of politics and technology. First up: Hear what Jon Henke has to say about blogging, Twitter, and the future of the Republican Party.

Casey Coleman, the CIO at the General Services Administration, is another e-government leader I'd like to give some attention to. Coleman is on Twitter, but it seems her most active efforts happen inside the GSA, where she writes an internal blog. Two weeks ago, Coleman wrote a public essay on her blogging experience.

Dear bloggers, online activists, Internet advocates, and digital journalists:

Are you democratic revolutionaries or just another interest group?

The Web on the Candidates

James Kotecki has been offering the presidential candidates free advice about using online video but he's disappointed in the one-way conversations most of them are conducting (read: they won't respond to him). John Edwards and Newt Gingrich wrote text responses to his videos analyzing their online campaigns; Joe Biden's campaign subscribed to Kotecki's videos. No other candidate has yet responded.

Jeff Jarvis responds to an article in the Politico by techPresident's Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej in which they compare the presidential candidates' use of video to the online videos of British MP David Cameron webcameron, in which the head of the Conservative party posts disarming and off-the-cuff videos that take place in his kitchen, on work trips, or anywhere else he happens to be. Compared to Cameron, Jarvis calls John McCain's videos "overproduced" and "overlong"; "Obama is spending too much time showing himself in front of big crowds and too little time just talking to us... Hillary is more casual but not candid. Yet they are all reveling in their ablity to make their own soundbites instead of being subject to the clipping whims of some network TV news editor."