ITU: Committed to connecting the world

New Internet freedom report ranks Estonia first, Iran last A Freedom House study examined the state of the Internet in 37 countries. The report found that while Estonia was atop the list, Iran came out on the bottom, as its Internet is highly restricted. In a new 410-page report published earlier this week, Freedom House, an American NGO, Estonia has been named the country with the highest level of Internet freedom. The United States placed second, and Germany came in third. In the report, an international team of researchers looked at 37 countries around the world to examine how open and free the Internet is in terms of filtering, censorship and other forms of repression online. The study examined both democratic countries, like the US, Germany and Australia, but also Zimbabwe, China and Belarus.

Twitter Verification Has More To Do With Being Good At Twitter Than With Identity Twitter has done a great job at keeping the whole “blue badge” verification process a mystery. If curiosity eats away at you like it does me, you’re in luck. A new video from comedians Hari and Ashok Kondabolu, featuring Anil Dash who has around 500k followers, shows the magical transformation from start to finish. First off, it’s important to know that you can’t ask to be verified. Twitter only offers this blessing upon those with enough followers and popularity to deserve it.

Tiny Estonia leads internet revolution Among the former communist countries set to join the European Union on 1 May, Estonia is the smallest, but the most technologically advanced. The former Soviet republic, where parliament has declared internet access a basic human right, is ahead of EU countries like France and Italy when it comes to the use of mobile phones and internet connections. Thirteen years ago, when Estonia regained its independence from the Soviet Union, only half of the country's 1.4 million people even had a telephone line. Rein Raamat, an academic in his 60s, comes every two months to have his blood pressure checked by his doctor at the university clinic in Tartu, Estonia's second biggest city. But Mr Raamat also has a "doc@home." B2B Lead Generation on Google+ Google+ is the social network created and powered by Google—the most influential search engine around. When Google updates its algorithms, marketers, content writers and all companies with a website should update their content and SEO strategies on the double. Google+ should certainly be included in your social media marketing, as it is now the second most popular social network after Facebook. Google+ is all the more important because of its increasing influence on Google search results. Social signals, like +1s, and AuthorRank are seriously changing the marketing landscape and the way businesses should approach social media.

e-Estonia One of the most widely used and innovative web applications in Estonia is e-School. It provides an easy way for education stakeholders to collaborate and organize teaching/learning information. The system has a range of different functions for its various users: Teachers enter grades and attendance information in the system, post homework assignments, and evaluate students’ behavior. They also use it to send messages to parents, students or entire classes. Parents use it to stay closely involved in their children's education. C.W. Anderson: How journalists’ self-concepts hindered their adaptation to a digital world Editor’s note: CUNY professor and long-time Nieman Lab contributor C.W. Anderson is out with a new book, Rebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age. It’s an exploration of the evolution of local journalism from print to online, viewed through the lens of the Philadelphia media ecosystem. I think C.W.

e-Estonia - Estonia.eu "e-Estonia" is the term commonly used to describe Estonia's emergence as one of the most advanced e-societies in the world – an incredible success story that grew out of the partnership between a forward-thinking government, a pro-active ICT sector, and a switched-on, tech-savvy population. Thanks to this success, Estonians and the Estonian state enjoy a wide range of e-solutions that those living elsewhere can only dream about. In Estonia you can access wi-fi internet even in forestsFor citizens of Estonia, e-services have become routine: e-elections, e-taxes, e-police, e-healthcare, e-banking, and e-school. The "e" prefix for services has almost become trite in the sense that it has become the norm. Most Estonians would not even consider doing things the old-fashioned way, like physically visiting an office when the process could easily be completed online.

Spirituality in Estonia - the world's 'least religious' country 26 August 2011Last updated at 14:50 By Tom Esslemont BBC News, Estonia Pagan traditions are embedded in the culture of Estonia When Estonians were recently asked whether religion played an important part in their life, only 20% said yes. It suggests the Baltic country is, statistically, the least religious country in the world. The windy streets of Tallinn offer a misleading picture of Estonia's religiosity. Main Activities - Budgeting - State Budget Financial services Ministry of Finance is responsible of coordinating various financial services sector policies, including financial markets, transactions in securities, banking, savings, insurance, pensions and other financial services-related social services. This section also includes money laundering and gambling-related policies. Financial Markets Policy Department is responsible for developing policies, preparing draft legislation and coordinating the implementation of legislation for the banking sector, securities, investment funds and other financial services, as well as financial stability.

Senior US congressman Mike Rogers: Glenn Greenwald is 'a thief' A senior US legislator has accused the former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald of illegally selling National Security Agency documents provided to him by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House intelligence committee, suggested Greenwald was a “thief” after he worked with news organizations who paid for stories based on the documents. “For personal gain, he’s now selling his access to information, that’s how they’re terming it … A thief selling stolen material is a thief,” Politico quoted Rogers as saying after a committee hearing on Tuesday. Rogers said his source for the information was “other nations' press services”. Since leaving the Guardian in October, Greenwald has worked on a freelance basis with news organizations worldwide on stories based on Snowden’s surveillance documents.

Estonia country profile A small and heavily forested country, Estonia is the most northerly of the three former Soviet Baltic republics. Not much more than a decade after it regained its independence following the collapse of the USSR, the republic was welcomed as an EU member in May 2004. The move came just weeks after it joined Nato. Overview These historic developments would have been extremely hard to imagine in not-so-distant Soviet times.