Keeping the Internet free

Internet freedom is not something to be taken lightly, as anyone who has tried to gain access to forbidden sites in China will tell you. The countries that would like to censor Internet content, including Russia, China, Iran and others, were eager to see their authority to do so etched into a United Nations treaty debated at a conference last month in Dubai. The United States and other nations committed to a free and open Internet refused to sign the treaty. It was a largely symbolic protest but the right thing to do.

The World Conference on International Telecommunications brought together 193 nations to consider revisions to principles last modified in the pre-Internet days of 1988. The principles govern the largely technical work of a specialized U.N. agency, the International Telecommunications Union. Much of the conference debate turned on whether the principles should be expanded to give national governments and the agency more voice in regulating the Internet.

Those governments that hunger for more control are not paragons of freedom. China, which already maintains the world's most pervasive Internet censorship machine, tightened its controls at year's end, requiring users of social media to disclose their identities. Russia has been moving toward selective eavesdropping to tamp down dissent. The treaty debated in Dubai may not change anything they are already doing but could provide a veneer of political cover.

The United States objected to a resolution appended to the treaty saying that "all governments should have an equal role and responsibility for international Internet governance." Translation: Let national governments get their hands on it. The United States has maintained that Internet governance should rest, as it does now, with a loose group of organizations, including the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages domain names and addresses under contract with the U.S. Commerce Department. There are suspicions aplenty in the rest of the world that this is the equivalent of U.S. control — suspicions that should not be ignored. While the Internet cannot fall into the hands of those who would censor and restrict it, the United States should put more effort into remaking the current model so that it can serve what has become a global infrastructure.

Ambassador Terry Kramer, who headed the U.S. delegation in Dubai, was clear that a power grab by the repressive countries was a non-starter. "No single organization or government can or should attempt to control the Internet or dictate its future development," Mr. Kramer insisted.

The conference did serve to highlight broad, opposing camps over Internet freedom. After the United States pulled out, 89 nations signed the agreement, including Russia, China, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. The blank screen of the Internet censor is not likely to disappear soon. A long and fateful battle looms for digital freedom.

The Niles Public Library has begun a $5.5 million renovation that will add study and meeting space, use technology to check in and keep track of books and improve energy efficiency.

The last renovations were 13 years ago, and trustees have been putting money aside each year since, meaning no referendum measure to raise the funds was needed, said Sue Wilsey, head of marketing and public relations. The work is expected to be completed near the end of the year.

"We're definitely going to have additional study room space and meeting spaces, which is what the public needs," Wilsey said. "We're going to have a computer training lab and a brand new board room. We're going to renovate to make the entry more energy efficient," providing a warm place for those waiting for the Niles Free Bus.

Also new will be a tracking wand to help locate mis-shelved books and those that are checked out. Automatic check-in terminals will be installed.

"It's really going to streamline things," Wilsey said. "There will still be people available in the lobby, but they're going to be transformed into more of a concierge individual."

What now houses fiction in the basement will be transformed into a computer area and a teen center. The first floor common area will have comfortable seats and easy access to popular materials, so people can hang out with a vending cafeteria that will sell coffee and drinks. It will also contain a space for pre-teens where they can play video games, and a toddlers' area called an Early Literacy Space where there will be lots of hands-on and learning activities.

The second floor will contain fiction, audio-visual material, DVD's and audio books. The third floor will contain a gas fireplace with chairs in the turret of the building.

"It's going to look cozy when people drive by," said Wilsey. "It's going to be so filled with bright light that people will want to come and sit and get a magazine or on a computer."

It seems pretty inevitable for a mobile app to go cross-platform, especially since it was created by former Googlers. But Ian Mendiola, co-founder and CEO at Umano-maker SoThree, said he realized that Android should be a priority after a marketing stunt where team members boarded Caltrain (that’s the commuter rail running between San Jose, Silicon Valley, and San Francisco) with fliers promoting the app, and they saw that many of the interested users owned Android phones.

The content is the same in both versions of the app, with about 20 articles selected each day by the Umano team and read by voice actors (so it sounds like a real news broadcast, not a robotic text-to-speech translator). It’s divided into six categories: Entertaining, Must Know, Geeky, Entrepreneurial, Inspirational, and Scientific — Mendiola said he was particularly impressed by the popularity of self-help content. The company doesn’t have a relationship with any of the publishers, he added, but it hasn’t received any complaints, and “if content owners would like their content taken down we’re happy to work with them.”

The Android app includes some platform-specific features, including Google+ integration and rich notifications, allowing users to access playback controls directly within their app notifications. There are, however, some features that haven’t made the transition to Android yet, including the ability to create playlists (so you can create a list at the beginning of your commute, then just let it run as you drive) and download content for offline listening — adding those features to Android is the company’s next goal, Mendiola said.

The team has bigger goals too. Mendiola said he wants to add more personalization to the app, so that it can create an automatic playlist based on your interests and the length of your commute. He also wants to “open up more of a voice actor marketplace,” so actors could visit the site and upload their own recordings, rather than waiting for an assignment from Umano.