Festivus Tab Dump

Global Mobile is scaling back to a holiday blogging schedule for the next week or so (which is to say, I'm going on vacation), but come back in January and we'll dive into another year of mHealth, ICTs for Development, digital diplomacy, 21st Century Statecraft, and all your other favorite subjects.

To send you on your way and keep your Global Mobile appetite sated in the coming days, I offer a few links:

- China bans individuals from registering domain names, and investigates personal websites. (h/t SR)

- Russians are suspicious that permitting Cyrillic letters in URLs will isolate them on the web, cut them off from the world, and facilitate governmental surveillance. (h/t JB)

- Glenn Fleishman writes on "the killer app of 1900" (electricity) and parallels between the electrification of this country, and the data-fication. (h/t WK)

- On Google's public policy blog, they report on new studies that see rising censorship around the world.

- Erik Hersman looks at 2009 ITU mobile and internet stats, and sees Africa growing faster than the rest of the world. But there's still a long way to go for that continent.

Happy Holidays!