By Cyrus Farivar

Like most Persians, Kia Kamran likes to talk. And from the moment I step into his office, he can’t say enough about one of his new clients, Pomplamoose. They’re a young duo from the San Francisco Bay Area. They gained a following online before their first album came out. Kamran pulls up their song, Expiration Date, on YouTube.

“This is a band that’s going against the grain,” Kamran said. “240,000 subscribers is no small number. The Black Eyed Peas have 130,000 subscribers. Pink has something like 30,000.”

A year and a half ago, a friend sent Kamran a YouTube link of Pomplamoose on his Facebook page. Kamran was hooked, and fired off an email to the band.

In the email, he wrote, “Hi guys, great stuff. The YouTube vids are completely original. Downloading the album now. Let me know if I can be of any assistance here yonder. My signature says attorney at law, and my website says tunelaw.com.”

Now, Kamran represents them.

Kamran was born in Iran in the early 1970s. He moved with his family to Fresno in 1979, when many Iranians left in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution. As a teenager in 1980s California, he fell in love with music and the music industry. After college he became a talent agent, and then decided to get a law degree in copyright and trademark law. Now he represents bands like Abjeez, which he also discovered on YouTube.

Abjeez is an Iranian band made up of two sisters who live in New York and Sweden. They did their first US tour last December. And Abjeez was the first Iranian band to play the Roxy, the famous night club on LA’s Sunset Boulevard.

“I played agent there,” Kamran said. “I booked that show for them, I did all the deal-making for them and brought them out here. It didn’t make me any money. But, in five years, 10 years, or 15 years, hopefully they’ll be playing the Hollywood Bowl every year.”

Even though Abjeez’ music is banned in Iran, many younger Iranians continue to find it online, and pass it around. That could make Kamran persona non grata should he ever try to go back to Iran. But Kamran said he’s not too worried about that. His main concern is helping bands make money, and that means playing in the US

Only about 10 percent of the people Kamran represents are Iranian or Iranian-American, but he said that being Iranian-American himself gives him a leg up in terms of going after bands from his home country. And not just bands. These days, Kamran represents people like comedian Maz Jobrani, who toured as part of the Axis of Evil comedy group.

Jobrani said it doesn’t hurt that Kamran can bridge the Iran-US cultural divide. Jobrani added that he used to have non-Iranian representation, but when he performed for Iranian groups, he’d sometimes get complaints. People would say things, like ‘your representative was really rude.’ And I’m like, ‘oh boy.’

“They don’t know that there’s this whole formality that Persians go through and you have to treat them in a certain way,” Jobrani said. “But with Kia, he’s got the background, so he knows how to deal.”

And dealing is what Kamran does.

Oh, and that band, Pomplamoose? They just made the cover of SF Weekly last month in San Francisco. It may not be Rolling Stone, but they’re set to go on their first-ever tour later this year.

• Kia Kamran’s Attorney Profile
• Pomplamoose official site
• Maz Jobrani official site
• Abjeez official site

As WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange continues his fight against extradition from Britain to Sweden, attention has now turned to man accused of giving WikiLeaks all of that classified information in the first place, Bradley Manning. This week, Manning was charged with 22 counts, including “aiding the enemy,” which is punishable by death. Prosecutors, however, said, they would not seek the death penalty in the case. For some, Manning is a pariah. For others, he is a hero. In this week’s podcast, we’ll hear from former CIA officer turned anti-war campaigner Raymond McGovern. Also, you’ll hear about One Day on Earth, a group that is doing all it can to ensure that videos shot in Libya during the recent crisis make it to the outside world.

On the lighter side, we’ll also discuss whether it might be time to tell students to put pen and paper down during exams, and let them use computers. Then, Cyrus Farivar takes us on a tour of the CeBit Trade Show in Hannover, Germany. Be sure to check out Spectrum, Cyrus’ weekly technology podcast for Deutsche Welle.

And finally, you’ll hear about some robot language teachers that are being used in South Korean schools.

For those who want more on old-time radio guru Gerry Wells, listener Ben Wolfram suggests you check out The Secret Life of Machines. And, for those who want to follow Dave Guezuraga’s trip by 400cc dirt bike through South East Asia, and then from Amsterdam to Magadan, Russia, you should really swing by his blog. Fun stuff, and he’s inspired me to keep making more episodes for him to listen to!

Remember, WTP is on Facebook, and on Twitter. Go on, be social with us!

(Photo: mar is sea Y)

By Cyrus Farivar

As the NBA enters its post All-Star Break second half in February, many basketball teams are turning to ethnic heritage nights as a way to boost sagging attendance. And while playing to the ethnic and national background in a team’s region isn’t new, these new marketing tactics have been sharply on the rise around the NBA over the past few seasons.

The NBA has nearly 90 players who were born overseas, ranging from Chinese superstars like Yao Ming, the towering center of the Houston Rockets, to Vladimir Radmanovic of Serbia, a power forward for the Golden State Warriors.

Radmanovic was honored in February at his team’s Serbian Heritage Night. The same month, the Toronto Raptors held Tamil Heritage Night. Next month, the Minnesota Timberwolves are hosting a German heritage night.

Mitch Germann, a spokesman for the Sacramento Kings, said his team is already on board. “We’ve had Latino family night, Jewish heritage night; we’ve had a Filipino heritage night. And still to come this season, a Russian-American night,” Germann said. Three years ago, the team only had two per season. This season, they’ve tripled that number.

Germann explained that one big draw for the Kings is the team’s small forward, Omri Casspi, the first Israeli player to play in the NBA. When the team travels, and cities hold Jewish heritage nights, Germann said, Casspi notices their support. “Sometimes there are hundreds of fans in the crowd in an opposing arena with his jersey or his sign. So I know it has a positive impact on him on the road.”

But not all heritage nights draw that level of fans. In fact, the Warriors’ recent Serbian heritage night was pretty low-key. During the February 13 game, there was no Serbian flag or special dances.

After the game, the few dozen Serbian fans who came as a group had a private Q&A with Vladimir Radmanovic. “I don’t think it’s a huge Serbian community,” he said, “but for me as a Serb, I like to invite those people to the game one night and get them to know each other.”

Radmanovic said because the San Francisco Bay Area isn’t exactly known for its Serbian community, it could be thought of as a quasi-public service. “I think it’s a perfect opportunity for people to come to the game and meet some new people,” Radmanovic said.

But of course, NBA teams are big business. Industry analysts say it’s hard to measure precisely how much impact these heritage nights have on ticket sales, but it’s clear why teams are doing it, and so a little bit of public outreach and marketing go hand in hand.

Marshal Cohen, a sports industry analyst with the NPD Group, said heritage nights could help raise attendance by 10-20 percent. “If it’s a ticket that’s already hard to get, that’s not going to increase ticket sales, but what it does do is increase the fan base, and that’s the ultimate goal.”

Radmanovic agrees with this assessment. After all, many kids growing up outside the US more or less arbitrarily decided which NBA teams they like. But now, with players like him from Serbia, team loyalty could change.

“Okay, I’m a Chicago Bulls fan, for example, or LA Lakers or whatever. But when you have a guy from your country playing for that team, that’s even better. You can say this is my team, because this guy plays there. And that’s how I believe people feel,” Radmanovic said.

Still, neither Serbian fans nor the best efforts of Radmanovic and his team have helped the Warriors out of a slump. Their record is hovering around .500 and they are solidly in third place in their division.

Maybe next month, they can boost their fortunes with Polynesian Heritage Night when they take on the Orlando Magic. But neither the Magic nor the Warriors has a Polynesian player.

But hey, the food should be pretty good, right?

• Serbian Heritage Night at the Warriors vs. Thunder game
• Tamil Heritage Night with the Toronto Raptors
• German Heritage Night with the Minnesota Timberwolves

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: The shuffle over whether to release Sarah Shourd suggests some growing divisions within Iran’s government. And so does another development. The defection of Iranian diplomats. In the past year, three of them have resigned and requested asylum in Europe. As Cyrus Farivar reports, the latest to defect announced his decision today.

CYRUS FARIVAR:  The diplomat’s name is Farzad Farhangian. Last week, he resigned his post as the press attaché in the Iranian Embassy in Brussels. And today in Oslo, Farhangian said he would be seeking asylum in Norway. He joined one of his former colleagues from the Iranian Embassy to Norway who defected in January. Speaking to reporters in Oslo, Farhangian said he supports Iran’s Green Movement, a term referring to the opposition movement that protested the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009.

SPEAKING PERSIAN

FARZAD FARHANGIAN:  I would like to officially announce to all the martyrs of the Green Movement of Iran and all those innocent political prisoners who are still in jail, that due to the events since last year, I have reached the decision to resign. I am seeking political asylum from the Norwegian government, and despite the potential threat to my family and myself, I have still put forward my request.

FARIVAR: Farhangian’s departure adds to a growing group of Iranian diplomatic defectors in the past year. Shahram Kholdi is a lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Manchester. He says the numbers are still relatively small, but it’s notable that these diplomats were longtime members of Iran’s foreign service.

SHAHRAM KHOLDI: And these people were the people who were hired at the height of the revolutionary zeal. So I think it has more to do with the quality of these people, that these people are veteran diplomats of the Islamic republic.

FARIVAR: Another Iran watcher, Nader Entessar, says diplomatic defections can be so wrenching that even a handful is significant. He’s a political scientist at the University of South Alabama.

NADER ENTESSAR: During the height of the Cold War, when the Soviet diplomats defected, we didn’t have many of them doing it all at one time. But it’s an indication of widespread dissatisfaction. Because defection is not an easy thing to do. You have to think about your career, you have to think about your family, you have to think about your future.

FARIVAR: Some observers say the defections may be an embarrassment to Tehran, but they don’t pose a serious challenge to the regime. For The World, I’m Cyrus Farivar.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This…is…WTP!

As a big fan of graphic artist Frank Miller, in all his various forms, I couldn’t resist using this poster for Episode 300, or using a bit of music called “To Victory” from the soundtrack at the top of the show. As you probably know, I don’t make much out of so-called “milestone” podcasts. But let me just say a big thanks to all of you who, in one way or the other, have bought the ticket and taken the ride with WTP over the past 5 and 1/2 years. I think it’s fitting that Ep 300 is the third installment of our monthly Tech Roundup.

I’m joined by Jonathan Fildes from the tech desk over at BBC News Online, and by Cyrus Farviar, who is now hosting Deutsche Welle’s weekly English-language sci/tech, Spectrum.

Here’s the lineup:

1) WikiLeaks: It started early this month with the whistleblower site’s release of the Afghan War Diaries, a set of US military memos abut the war in Afghanistan. Needless to say, not everyone was pleased with the release of these documents. Then, WikiLeaks’ editor and founder, Julian Assange, seemed to be in hot water in Sweden, over allegations of rape and molestation from two women. An arrest warrant for Assange was quickly dropped, though. Swedish authorities still want to question him. Meanwhile, WikiLeaks released another secret document; this time, it’s an internal CIA memo. We talk a bit about all of this, including the Swedish Pirate Party’s decision to host WikiLeaks’ material, the transparency, or lack thereof, in WikiLeaks’ finances, and the “insurance” file on the Wikileaks site.

2) Google in Germany: Being based in Bonn, Cyrus was keen to talk about Germany’s ongoing back and forth with Google over privacy, especially with regards to Street View. Here’s an interesting take on Germans and their privacy laws. On the flip side, some people will go to incredible lengths to get themselves noticed on Street View.

3: BlackBerry Bans: We return to a story that’s figured heavily on WTP over the past month. On this podcast, we try to sort out the difference between the encryption used for “enterprise” users of the BlackBerry, and that for “regular” users of the device. All this as a deadline looms in India for a BlackBerry ban. The BBC has a nice explainer on the proposed bans.

4) North Korea Says “No, We’re NOT on Twitter:” Well, are the North Koreans using Twitter and YouTube, or aren’t they? As with all things in North Korea, it seems, it’s hard to distinguish fact from fiction. Officially…maybe they aren’t. But just what the heck is a special delegate for North Korea’s Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries? And what is the role of the Korean Friendship Association?

5: Rubik’s Cube: Frustrating. That’s the word that always springs to mind when I see mention of that dastardly cube. It, along with hair metal band Poison, haunted my waking nightmares during the 1980s. Now, Jonathan Fildes tells us about some new research that shows that any of the billions of possible starting configurations for the cube can be solved in 20 moves, or fewer. For kicks, here’s a guy who can solve a Rubik’s Cube in…7.08 seconds.

Wow. I can’t think of a better way to end Episode 300 than with that.

Well, OK — I did throw in some good news for David Kobia and Ushahidi, first featured on WTP about 2 and 1/2 years ago! And a nice little story from listener Mike Plugge about how WTP helped him get a second date. Here’s hoping for 300 more episodes, and lots of second (maybe even third or fourth) dates!

If you’re wondering about the music at the end, that was Cake’s “Short Skirt, Long Jacket.”

Remember, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Before we get started this week…we just wanted to let you know that you can get the Tech Podcast delivered to your email inbox each and every week. Sign up here. You’ll get a brief description of the show, plus a link to the mp3!

It was with great fanfare that the Large Hadron Collider first fired up at CERN in Switzerland back in September of 2008. Nine days after coming online, the $10 billion project had to be taken offline, due to some bad soldering, of all things. The magnets, pictured here courtesy of gamsiz via Wikipedia, which direct the proton beams were severely damaged. Well, a little more than a year (and an additional $40 million) later, the LHC is back….big-time. The supercollider provided a super collision today: 7 trillion electron volts worth. Two proton beams had been flying at each other for ten days, in a 17 mile tunnel 300 feet under the ground. At 1:06PM local time, they collided at nearly the speed of light, creating microscopic bursts of energy that scientists say mimicked the conditions at the beginning of the universe. “We’re within a billionth of a second of the Big Bang,” CERN spokesman James Gillies said. In the podcast, you’ll hear from Gillies and others at CERN, and get their reaction to the days events. Here are some useful links:

• BBC Video: CERN LHC sees high energy success
• BBC: LHC explained (highly recommended)
• CERN: The LHC

We’ve also got an update on Google move to relocate its search engine to Hong Kong, and gauge Chinese response. There seemed to be some confusion today, as mainland users struggled to access the Hong-Kong site at all. There were some initial reports that China was blocking access entirely, although other reports put it down to a technical fault on Google’s part.

Afghanistan figures into this week’s podcast too. Apparently, explosive growth in the use of the Internet there is causing the Afghan government to consider some censorship moves of its own. We check in with a BBC correspondent on the ground in Kabul.

And we end this week with a piece on I’m Halal, which bills itself as the world’s first halal search engine! Check it out for yourself, although it appears that the English version is in private beta.

Oh, and here’s where you go to check out The World Science Podcast!

Since you asked, that clip at the start of this episode of WTP comes courtesy of the most reviled, and loved, episode I think I ever did. It’s from back in 2006, and yes…that’s Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington. You can hear the entire episode here.

Follow us on Facebook, or Twitter. Subscribe to the enhanced version of the podcast on iTunes (chapter makers, images, links…the works), or via good old RSS.

Another busy week at the tech desk. We lead off the podcast with two items on Haiti. The first is on efforts to create good, interactive maps of the country. Here are relevant links:

• Haiti: Open Street Map
• Ushahidi’s Haiti page
• FrontlineSMS
• Gaia GPS iPhone app for Haiti

Then, we spoke with Professor Leysia Palen of the University of Colorado at Boulder about Project EPIC’s “Tweak the Tweet” campaign. Here’s a short video:

We then had a report from Cyrus Farivar on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Internet freedom speech. You can read the full text of the speech here, or watch the video from the speech here.

Following that, we dug a bit deeper into Google’s recent announcement that it might leave China. We feature two interviews, one with Rebecca McKinnon, and another with blogger Isaac Mao.

And we return to Haiti to finish the podcast. Amid all the coverage we’re doing about the efforts to get telecommunications up and running, it pays to remember the power of the good old-fashioned wireless: the radio. Our short segment is on SignalFM in Port-au-Prince.

As you might imagine, the show has been preoccupied this week with the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. I was asked to look into a few different tech angles. The results are a couple of segments that I’ve included in this week’s podcast. First, anchor Jeb Sharp and I talk about the central importance of getting telecommunications back up and running, both for aid groups and for locals. We talk about Telecoms without Borders, a group of emergency first responders who go in and establish satellite communications links to allow aid workers to access email, phone service, etc. The group also established call centers that enable locals to make a free phone call to anyone, anywhere in the world. You can read more about them in my post here. We also talk about the online mapping platform Ushahidi. You can check out the work going on surrounding the Haiti relief efforts here. The show also asked me to look into how US aid groups, notably the American Red Cross, are making donations via text message a central part of their fundraising campaigns for Haiti relief. Here are some relevant links:

• More on the Red Cross text campaign
• Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti text campaign
• Mobile Active’s list of text campaigns

We spend the other half of the show talking about Google’s announcement that, following cyber-attacks on Chinese human rights activists using Google, they will stop censoring their search engine in China, and may pull out of the country all together. Here are some relevant links:

• More coverage from the BBC
• Google’s official statement
• Have Your Say: Should Google pull out of China?

Also, for some different takes on what’s going on, you can try here, here, and here. Please post more links in the comments below!

Remember, WTP on Facebook and Twitter.

As you know, I rarely ask for anything more than a bit of your time, attention, and critical thinking. But, Public Radio International has to pay the bills, and I have a vested interest in keeping this podcast going. I hope you have that same vested interest. Help us keep bringing you the Tech Podcast, and all of our podcasts. Visit this PRI webpage and find out how to donate. We like to think that week in, week out, we have a show worth your time (and maybe a bit of your money), and this week’s no exception. The centerpiece? A segment on Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, who is widely considered to be the man who made it possible to blog in the Persian language. Derakhshan was jailed not long after he went back to Iran a little more than a year ago. Cyrus Farivar does an admirable job of taking you through the strange twists and turns of Derakhshan’s life in the past few years.

On a related note, we hear about an effort to better aggregate, tag and categorize Persian language blogs. It’s a collaboration between a Persian language social media website called Balatarin, and The BBC World Service Trust’s Iran Project. Here are the headlines from the research: 1) the Persian language blogosphere is a lot more diverse than many people think, and 2) conservative, pro-government blogging is on the rise. Listen in to find out more.

We start the podcast with a great little story about Peter Onguti, a Kenyan living in Canada, and his quest to bring cheap, low-power FM transmitters to markets in Africa. Naturally, I feel an affinity toward any effort to spread the wonder of radio more widely. And speaking of discussions about appropriate technologies, do check out Rhitu Chatterjee’s World Science Podcast this week. She’s also running a great online discussion with an engineer with real-world experience in designing for the developing world.

We also revisit WTP 263 and digital memory, and dip into the listener mailbag!

We’re on Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed. Join us!!

Wow. It’s not often the Technology Podcast gets to celebrate the very reason, figuratively and literally, for its existence. But this week, the Internet celebrated its 40th anniversary/birthday/whatever you want to call it. That’s UCLA’s Leonard Kleinrock, with the Interface Message Processor. Forty years ago this week, Kleinrock and his team sent the first message between two computers. One of the computers was at UCLA, and the other was up at Stanford Research Institute (SRI). That message was supposed to be “L-O-G-I-N.” Prophetically, maybe poetically, only the “L” and “O” got through before the Net experienced its first system crash. Anyone know how to say “Fail Whale” in 1969-speak? Anyway — to celebrate, UCLA threw a symposium-ish bash. You can read more about that here. Our intrepid left coast correspondent, Cyrus Farivar, happened to be down in Los Angeles for the festivities. He sent us interviews with Kleinrock and Charles Kline (who typed that fateful “L-O” message). He also sent along an extended interview with Chinese blogger and Internet activist Isaac Mao. All in all, the three interviews provide a fascinating glimpse into what the Net was, what it is, and what it could be someday. And speaking of where the Net is headed. Word came today from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is to allow scripts besides the Latin script in domain names. These so-called Internationalized Domain Names will now be allowed to include Arabic, Chinese, Russian and many other scripts. As always, explaining the domain name set-up is a bit tricky, so here’s a video to help you:

I know many of you will be asking for some of the source material for the opening audio montage. So, below, please find two incredibly enlightening videos. This stuff is gold, people, pure gold. We’re on Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World. A blogger named Hossein Derakhshan was arrested in Tehran on November 1, 2008. He’d only been in Iran for two months. Derakhshan is a dual citizen of Iran and Canada. While in Toronto in 2001 he created one of the first Persian-language blogs and became a pioneer of the Iranian blogoshpere. It’s been a year since his arrest but details of his case are still murky. Iran has said little about it and his family has largely kept silent. Until now. Cyrus Farivar reports.

CYRUS FARIVAR: Last week Hossein’s father, Hassan Derakhshan, published an open letter in the Iranian reformist newspaper Salaam. It was addressed to the new head of the Iranian judiciary system. In it he said the family has only had just two short meetings with Hossein and they have no information about his legal situation. And that’s why a year after his brother’s arrest Hamed Derakhshan began speaking to the press. In an interview with The World Hamed Derakhshan told me he can’t afford to be silent anymore.

HAMED DERAKHSHAN: They have told us that it would be better for him. His case would be processed faster if there is no unwanted attention to it. But now I feel that you know I’ve got to do something about it.

FARIVAR: Hamed Derakhshan says his family still has very little information about his brother. They don’t even know what prison he’s being held in.

HAMED DERAKHSHAN: We don’t officially know what his charges are. There were rumors in the beginning that his charges are insulting religious figures. And then we heard about spying for Israel. But officially, now we don’t know what they are.

FARIVAR: With no real information out there, rumors have rampant in the Persian-language internet. Some even speculate that Hossein Derakhshan was collaborating with the Iranian government and perhaps spying for them. His brother Hamed Derakhshan denies these charges and says that the family continues to press authorities for more information. The Iranian government isn’t speaking about Hossein Derakhshan’s case and the Canadian government isn’t saying much either. Canadian officials declined to speak on tape about the case. But Rodney Moore, of the Office of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, sent an e-mail saying Canada continues to press for access to Hossein Derakhshan under international law. He added that Derakhshan’s dual nationality makes things complicated for them. And there are other complications in the case. Before he left for Iran in 2008, Derakhshan said something a little surprising to family and friends. One of them was Pedram Moallemian, an Iranian-Canadian living in Los Angeles.

PEDRAM MOALLEMIAN: He was convinced that the Iranian government and the judiciary system is a fair and adequate one and in case he was arrested he would be fairly treated and represented and he made it very clear that if he is arrested he does not want a big noise made about it outside.

FARIVAR: In his early years as a blogger Derakhshan leaned more towards Iran’s Reformist camp. He initially wanted to build bridges between Iran and the West. He even traveled to Israel on his Canadian passport in 2006. But Derakhshan began to change his political views. Derakhshan ultimately began supporting Iran’s hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his policies says Omid Memarian, an Iran analyst with Human Rights Watch in San Francisco.

OMID MEMARIAN: I think Hossein was smarter than that to become a fan of Ahmadinejad. But he was. He was really into the new government and defending their policies and he was after everybody. Like every single person who was into defending human rights issues, like Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel laureate.

FARIVAR: Derakhshan didn’t just go after Shirin Ebadi. He wrote inflammatory things in his blog about anyone he didn’t agree with. He even accused Memarian of converting to Christianity which is forbidden under Islamic law. In 2007, Derakhshan got slapped with a $2 million libel case. But Memarian says none of this should stop human rights advocates from trying to defend Derakhshan’s rights.

MEMARIAN: Hossein’s case is a human rights case. You know, no matter what Hossein did and no matter what damages he created for people, he has been disappeared for almost a year. He’s trapped and he needs help.

FARIVAR: At this point Derakhshan doesn’t have many friends left who are publicly willing to fight for him. For now it appears Derakhshan will likely continue to remain in an unknown Tehran prison. For The World I’m Cyrus Farivar.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

I can always count on the hop across the big pond to London will produce a couple of serious nights of insomnia. That’s the downside. On the upside, I get the quiet time needed to finish up these show notes for Tech Podcast 263, which have been languishing in my addled brain for a number of days, forgotten, despite all of my electronic attempts to remind me that I needed to write them up. Ahhh, and that leads us to the highlight of WTP 263: an interview with author Viktor Mayer-Schönberger about his new book, called Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in The Digital Age. It’s a fascinating look at how digital technologies, and especially the growing capacity for storage, has made us forget how to forget. You might think that’s a good thing, but truth be told, says Mayer-Schönberger, it’s absolutely critical that humans be able to forget. In fact, it’s part of what has defined us as human. He makes a compelling argument, and even offers up a solution; namely, that each and every piece of digital information that we store give us the option of an “expiry date,” after which it is deleted (or we’re given the chance to determine whether that piece of information is still relevant). Those of us with 7,000 badly snapped digital photos squirreled away on hard drives might give this idea the thumbs up. In a delicious piece of irony, by the way, Viktor turned up at the studios exactly a week before my calendar said he was going to be there. The stored information, obviously, is only as good as the data entry entity. Duh, Clark.

Along the way to that interview, we have numerous other fun and thrilling stops. We hear about not one, but two fiber-optic cables that might soon be headed toward Havana, Cuba. A Miami-based company says it’s gotten the go ahead from the United States government to build one. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez says his country will also build one. Read more about both of those proposals here. We talk with Robert Faris at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society about what impact fiber-optics and high-speed Intenret might have on ordinary Cubans’ online access. See here for the Open Net Initiative’s write-up on Cuban Internet access.

Also, Cyrus Farivar talks with Suvi Linden, Finland’s Minister of Communications, about the country’s decision to give each and every Finn the right to a 1 MB broadband connection. You think that’s cool? A few years down the road, they want to guarantee the right to a 100MB connection.

And our final item brings us back nicely to Britain, where Twitter recently trumped the newspapers on a major news story. You can read all about the kerfluffle over Twitter and Trafigura here. You can find more links, and read a transcript of the interview that appears in the podcast here. And, since I’m over in London for the week, I thought I’d try to organize another WTP meet-up at the old Lamb and Flag in Covent Garden. Directions here. Based on the feedback I’m getting so far, it looks like Thursday evening, October 22. I’ll be there, providing I have more luck finding it this time than I did last time, from about 5:30PM. Hope to see you there!

Remember, we’re on Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed. Also, listener Pepe said I should start putting more information about the music in the show notes. Good idea, Pepe. This week, Spanish rockers Jarabedepalo provided our cool and groovy tune, a track called La Flaca.

• I’mHalal search engine
• BBC: A beginner’s guide to Islam

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MARCO WERMAN: Yesterday, there was another question on the subject in the British Parliament.  Prime Minister Gordon Brown was asked how his government would prevent future attempts to keep Parliamentary debate out of newspapers.  Here is what he said.

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: This is an issue where an injunction has been awarded but it’s been awarded in the context where it has to remain a secret, and people are not told what the outcome is generally.  The Justice Secretary has talked to the parties concerned.  He is looking into this issue, and I hope that on the basis of what he suggests progress can be made not just in this case but in more generally to clear up what is an unfortunate area of the law.

WERMAN: Tweeters and other Internet users face severe access restrictions in several countries around the world.  China and Iran, for example, most of the time any restriction on the Internet is frowned upon by users.  But our next story turns the issue on its head.  Cyrus Farivar reports on a new Internet search engine designed to help Muslim Internet users avoid certain kinds of content.

CYRUS FARIVAR: Halal is an Arabic adjective meaning something that is permissible in Islam.  The opposite of halal is haram, or “forbidden.”   That explains the message you get after you search for “alcohol” on IMHalal.com.

SOM POURFARZANEH: Oops, your search inquiry has a haram level of one out of three. This means that the search results fetched by IMHalal could be haram. If you still think the results will be clean, click me.

FARIVAR: That’s Som Pourfarzaneh, a doctoral student at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He studies Muslims in America, like himself. He says IMHalal is an example of Muslims trying to negotiate their theology and their values in a secular, public sphere like the Internet.  IMHalal.com was created by Reza Sardeha, a 20-year-old Iranian studying business in Amsterdam.

REZA SARDEHA: Our goal was actually to create a safe and clean environment for those people and Muslims from all over the world who really don’t want to bump into explicit content.

FARIVAR: Sardeha says that he consulted for months with imams and other Muslim scholars in the Netherlands to come up with a list of search terms that could potentially be problematic for observing Muslims. His site launched in early September.  It has three levels of warnings for users.   The first one being for relatively minor things that are haram, like alcohol and pork.

SARDEHA: Level 2 is probably a search term which could be risky because some keywords for example like the term sexual education is perfectly fine. People still got the chance to click through and see the result and inform themselves.

FARIVAR: So what’s Level 3?

SARDEHA: Level 3 is really a no go. If you get a Level 3, the content that will be fetched as highly inappropriate, and therefore you won’t get the chance to click through.

FARIVAR: This isn’t the first religious themed search engine.  There are already a number of Christian ones, and at least one Hebrew language ultra-Orthodox Jewish search engine.  In January, a Moroccan company started “Islamic Google,” a way to filter Google searches for Islam-friendly sites. And in June, a Saudi company even launched NaqaTube, a clean and Islamically pure version of YouTube.  Sam Pourfarzaneh says there’s a growing demand for such websites.  Porfarzaneh also points out that the finer points of what exactly is Haram and Halal are up for constant debate depending on the particular religious school or tradition.  Still, in its first two weeks of operation IMHalal reported that it had received hundreds of thousands of visitors to its site. Some are skeptical that Muslim Internet users around the world will really embrace the concept of a restrictive search engine.   Helmi Noman is a Yemeni researcher with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He studies the Internet in North Africa and the Middle East, which he says is already very restrictive.

HELMI NOMAN: Governments and authorities implement and impose different forms of censorship, installing cameras in Internet cafés, requiring Internet users in cyber cafes to provide their names and I.D.s before they can use the services in Internet cafés in addition to arresting and harassing online writers and activists.  So I do not think that users in the region would add another layer of filtering by using these services.

FARIVAR: But the creator of IMhalal is optimistic. Reza Sardeha says he’ll continue to improve the searching mechanism, and he hopes that by this time next year IMHalal will be the number one search engine in the Middle East.   For The World, I’m Cyrus Farivar.

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If you’ve come to this week’s technology podcast looking for in-depth coverage of Google Wave, then you’re going to be disappointed. Sorry. Instead, we’re going to dive into the exciting world of…drumroll…smart electricity meters! Yes, that’s right. This might sound as dull as dishwater, but if you take a listen to this week’s podcast, we hope you’ll change your mind. We’ll take you to France to hear about a company called Voltalis. They make a device called the Bluepod (not pictured), which is supposed to help French consumers monitor their electricity consumption, and modify their behavior. Sounds great, but there’s a catch. The French government regulators don’t like the device. Mon dieu! We’ll follow that with an interview with Mark England in, well, England. He works for a British company called Sentec, which is making a smart lekky meter of its own (pictured). Unbridled fun and cracking good conversation ensues.

Also on this week’s podcast, Cyrus Farivar tells us about one Dutch politician‘s plan to get the European Union to stop selling Internet filtering hardware to the Iranians. Considering all the reporting we’ve done here on WTP about Iran and the Internet, this is one you won’t want to miss. And we also have a great big, hulking report on the state of nanotechnology. It’s an interesting check-in.

We end with a short conversation with Rhitu Chatterjee, the new ultra-hip host of The World Science Podcast. Rhitu will give you a teaser on what’s coming up on her podcast this week. Hint, hint — the Ig Nobel Awards. Warning: you will laugh out loud.

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