Iran has installed equipment on its national telecom network that allows it to spy on users' online activities and correspondence. Nokia Siemens installed the monitoring equipment for Iran's government-controlled telecom network. The equipment allows the state to conduct Deep Packet Inspection.

Iran is well known for filtering the Net, but the government has moved to do the same for mobile phones. Nokia Siemens has confirmed it supplied Iran with the technology needed to monitor, control and read local telephone calls. The technology allows authorities to monitor communications across a network, including voice calls, text messaging and Web traffic.

In Iran, Internet users are still able -- at least in limited ways -- to send Twitter messages and transmit video to one another and to a world of spectators. Despite the Internet crackdown, the videos and tweets indicate to many that broadly distributed Internet tools cannot be completely repressed by an authoritarian government.

It's widely recognized that Iran employs systems of Internet restriction and monitoring to keep its people from engaging in activities it deems subversive. If Iran puts so much effort into monitoring its citizens, how is so much information coming to us via Twitter?

In the battle over consumer privacy, it looks as though information gleaned from Deep Packet Inspection may be under fire. The Bureau of Consumer Protection's director at the FTC has indicated how unhappy he is with the state of online privacy, and suggests that DPI may be the next aspect of data collection that will be regulated.

Bandwidth is going to increase. Those who attempt to cap it or limit it are only going to make their own pipes significantly less valuable. However, those who recognize how empowering more bandwidth can be will start to realize that providing ever more bandwidth increases value and that clamping down on bandwidth kills value.

Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and several smaller phone companies are joining ranks with consumer advocates to ask the FCC to cap the price for network connections they need to transfer their customers' voice and data exchanges.

As journalists have been systematically expelled from Iran, TV news is increasingly looking like a Web page, with YouTube video and grainy cell phone snippets replacing traditional news footage. News organizations are vetting sources on Twitter and Facebook for authenticity and angles. It all adds up to a story that's being covered like none before it.

The number of reporters in state capitols has decreased 32 percent in the past six years. Without more reporting from state capitols, most of us won't know what our lawmakers are doing. So what can we do to change it? Several statehouse journalists have begun their own blogs and others are experimenting to get breaking news to wider audiences. Will any of these innovations stick?

In the past few weeks, newspapers are finding that Twitter is not to be ignored, even if some are not sure how to handle it. For most, the 140-character "tweets" are both a blessing and a curse. So, how are newsrooms adapting to Twitter?

After months of bitter negotiations, empty threats and bad publicity, the Boston Globe and its largest union are ready for a do-over. The Boston Newspaper Guild and the paper's owner, the New York Times Co., are close to a deal that would be similar to the proposal workers rejected just a couple of weeks ago.

In the offline world, newspapers have dominated ad sales to local businesses. By introducing their local advertisers to Yahoo!, newspapers run the risk of turning over their best customers to a digital powerhouse as they try to rebuild their own businesses online. Why would newspapers open themselves up to such potentially destructive competition?