1. Monthly archive
  2. May 2017

May 2017

ASC3 Launches Services Call Center Providing Workforce Development Opportunities for Digital Literacy Program Participants

Ashbury Senior Computer Community Center (ACS3), a nonprofit inter-generational technology learning center in the heart of Cleveland (OH) helps those still living on the other side of the digital divide keep up. More than half of the participants in Ashbury’s programs have an annual household income below $15,000 with few options available to them to learn technology and get access to the internet on their own. Mobile Citizen’s partnership and much-needed affordable internet has been a key component in Ashbury’s ability to offer this new and innovative Services Call Center program.

Ashbury, together with Connect Your Community (CYC), recently launched a Services Call Center offering nonprofit customers basic services such as research design, survey creation, survey programming, survey administration, data analysis, data cleaning, data entry, focus group hosting, focus group moderation, evaluation and report writing. It doubles as a valuable workforce development opportunity for their 6,000 digital literacy program participants as call center associates are required to have to have digital literacy and other technology skills to be able to participate in the program.

A “Bug Fix” That Could Unlock the Web for Millions Around the World

Companies that do business online are missing out on billions in annual sales thanks to a bug that is keeping their systems incompatible with Internet domain names made of non-Latin characters. Fixing it could also bring another 17 million people who speak Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Indian languages online. Those are the conclusions of a new study by an industry-led group sponsored by the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization responsible for maintaining the list of valid Internet domain names.

The objective of the so-called Universal Acceptance Steering Group, which includes representatives from a number of Internet companies including Microsoft and GoDaddy, is to encourage software developers and service providers to update how their systems validate the string of characters to the right of the dot in a domain name or e-mail address—also called the top-level domain.

Trump’s Campaign Can’t Just Erase History on the Internet

President Donald Trump's overhauled campaign website looks a lot like the original: the resident in a suit and red tie, embedded tweets pillorying #FakeNews, and “Make America Great Again” hats for sale in every color (plus camo, of course). But what really stands out is what’s missing: the entire archive of content published on the site prior to January.

The purge began May 8, after one White House reporter asked press secretary Sean Spicer why the campaign website still included references to the Muslim ban. That same day, during oral arguments in the federal appeals case over the Trump administration’s executive order barring travelers from six Muslim-majority countries, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert King also pressed Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Wall about the site. Wall argued that the current ban doesn’t discriminate against people on religious grounds, but King insisted the press release contradicts that claim. “He has never repudiated what he said about the Muslim ban,” Judge King said of the president. “It is still on his website.” Within hours it was gone. Within a day, so was every other pesky press release that might someday prove incriminating.

© 1994-2024 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. All Rights Reserved.