But lets think about this for a second. If suddenly, without warning, my email was cut off, AND if that was my primary, or worse, only email system.  Then that means I lost all of my messages AND contact information. To get around the problem you can access other systems that read in your email from Gmail and still function. But what are you really accomplishing here but reinforcing the fact that you do not trust your own population.  I can imagine a few business people that rely on gmail being pretty pissed off losing past emails and contact information.

This will be interesting to watch.  I will guess most people will have found a workaround before thursday; and I also do not imagine a national system will be up anytime soon.

As for getting to GMail without using gmail, there are a number of solution depending on how its blocked.  For example, if mail.google.com is NOT blocked, you can at least read you email via RSS from this link.

https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom

You can also use a service like NetVibes or other feed readers. As for sending?  If your on a mac, perhaps something like mailplane which SEEMS to work outside of the web client.

here is the link:  http://www.twittfilter.com/iranElection.php#

A problem I have with twitter search during the election is some many RT’ed messages saying the same thing.  So I decided to extend the normal twittFilter search page to hide any message where 90% or greater of the content is the same per search. I also added per person grouping in search.  So if someone is doing a LOT of posting, you will only see the first three posts.  I also have #iranElection, #gr88, and #iran9 as default searches.  You should be able to change to whatever you want and it will remember it using cookies. If there are better tags, please let me know.

The filter is not perfect and right now it errors to show more information then less. I will try to improve it over time.

Let me know if you find any bugs or anything I can do (thats quick) to make it more useful.
Christopher

BTW, for some reason, in IE, it renders the 3rd search column under the second one. I’ll have a look at that in the morning.  Also, IE has other odd JS issues.

Future, extend removing duplicate across searchs.

Create a div to show duplicates if the user wants.

“Calling for attacks for the sake of getting their messages across is an action far from actually causing any positive development in the situation. The only thing these hacktivists are succeeding in is making things worse. So please do not participate in any of these activities,” blogged J.M. Hipolito of Trend Micro.

Now, its not like Iran does not have fat pipes and may people have DSL in their homes. If the government was not messing with the connections, a few DDoS attached on gov. sites would not have much (if any) real affect on other interweb’s series of tubes.  But from what I’ve been hearing, they have been jamming satellite singles, blocking various IPs (web services) and bring digital cell service up and down. (Cannot get a good answer on the last bit).  So its hard to know just how much traffic CAN get in and out at any one time.

There is one other consideration. If you are outside of Iran and launching DDoS attacks, the gov can continue to claim the problems are from outside agitators.

I’m 50/50 on this issue. DD0S can be a good way to display unity and displeasure, but at the same time, if web traffic is throttled, it could only make things worse.  Hard to say.

BTW: I am watching whats going on with iPhone3.0 loads and talking to people about their experience, so I will be returning to my mobile gadget focus once this whole iranElection thing is done.  Or at least the interply between world politics, technology and social media slows down.

Here is more directly from Zannel

A multi-media microblogging service called zannel.com has created a
#iranelection channel www.zannel.com/iranelection where Twitter users can share in
real-time their photos and videos with others to view and discuss.
Geo-tagged updates can be viewed on a map of Iran.

While people are posting photos of the protests to their flickr accounts
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/mousavi1388/) and to twitpic
(http://twitpic.com/7mbhc), Zannel¹s #iranelection is the 1st group channel
that allows multiple Twitter users to see and share their photos, videos,
location, and longer tweets all in one spot. Simply go to
www.zannel.com/iranelection and login
with your Twitter ID to get started.

I think this could be quite useful for Friday after Ayatollah Khomeini give his speech during Friday prayers regarding the election. Something to keep an eye on.

here is the link:  http://www.twittfilter.com/iranElection.php#

I’m sure most of you who use twitter are already aware of what has been going on. Because of the media blocks in Iran, social media tools like twitter, friendfeed, flickr and facebook have been used to maintain information flow in and out of the country. What’s interesting is watching the real time evolution of a self structured networks of social media users working to keep the flow of information open. We have also seen the social network encouraging services to be sensitive to unfolding events. Using twitter as my example, we first saw the request of twitter to delay a schedule maintenance operation in order to insure twitter was still up during peak times in Iran. Stories have gone around that the US gov. also made a request for this delay. (this is confirmed).  I would bet both the public, the US gov and perhaps a direct appeal from Mirhossein Mousavi himself have all taken place.

The last I’ve heard, cell phone and internet service are cut off during the rallies and only spotty afterward. I’m not sure how people are able to communicate via media during these times, short of satellite, but somehow, the social network seems to organize and function.

There are also nodes within the social network where people try to collect and share information. Nico Pitney from the huffintonpost is one of these nodes. Here is you can see information and media flowing in at realtime. (link)

There is so much going on, I’m trying to keep a short list of events around how twitter is being used.  For more information, another node, have a look at this site for a more detailed history:

SUMMARY OF GREEN REVOLUTION: http://www.pastebin.ca/1462651 #iranelection

Please email me if I missed anything or need add to the list below.

• #CNNFail : CNN was not providing much time to the events in Iran. A mass of tweets with the hash #CNNFail started to trent.  CNN see’s this an increases coverage

• Follow #iranElection : As various media elements start to get blocked, social media becomes the primary way information is moved in and out of Iran.  #iranElection becomes the primary tag

• Changing Proxies : Although Iran cannot shut down twitter, they can block parts of the internet. By providing alternative proxies, people are able to get around the blocks.

• #nomaintance : Twitter was suppose to perform maintenance in the middle of the day in Iran.  A number of hashtags with #nomaintance went around asking to delay twitter going down.  There were also reports that a request from the US Gov. and Moussavi for the delay were submitted.
• Traffic reduced, phones cut, Sat dishes collected: This has reduced the flow of information, not stopped it.
  

• Changing icon color to Green : Twitter users change the color of their icons to green to protest the election.

• Changing timezone to GMT+3.30 hrs : To create noise, people change the timezone of their twitter profiles to +3.30 GMT and encourage those in Iran to change to anything but 3:30.
• Request to not use names while RT: RT mean to reweet or copy and resend a message. A request is going around not to use names inorder to protect the source from monitoring.
• The Pirate Bay rename to Persian Bay: Information to support private posting and other techniques to avaide detection are shared. http://iran.whyweprotest.net/
• Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts: to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Be aware.
• Hactivists use simple iframe meta refreash as a DDoS attach on Gov. sites.
• Mousavi and Karroubi’s facebook and twitter accounts compromised: Friday’s protest is still on. Seems the word is going around.