Cyber cafe operators are suffering heavy losses as their cafes go virtually empty during Ramadan with most of the Muslim young men devoting their time during the month to praying and reciting the Qur’an.

Read more at Gulf Times

 Deborah Fallows is  a senior research fellow in PEW Internet& American life project and she have many interesting  articles about the usage of internet in China.

Her latest entry is about internet cafe in rural China: "I sought out my first rural internet bar last week, in the village of Wolong ...The internet cafe was pretty amazing ..l. It was tucked at the end of a row of shops facing a construction site behind the main road through town. We trudged there by negotiating muddy puddles and clambering over stacks of  rebar until we reached an open double door with a drooping homemade sign  announcing the internet...The space was a dark, dank, odiferous garage-like room, probably about 12 feet by 20 feet, with about 10 computers set up in two rows facing the outer, moldy walls. Old computers were set on simple tables, and each spot had a plastic chair".

Read more @ Pew/Internet  

To read all of the posts of Deberah Fallows about the Internet in China click here

A help-group called Nethrodaya has set up a cyber café at Moggapair in Chennai. The cyber cafe is a first of its kind in the country, where visually impaired people can access Internet using the software called JAWS, provided by Bill Gates Foundation and Freedom Scientific.

G Govinda Krishnan, head of the help-group 'Nethrodaya', says, “For the past couple of decades, the visually impaired are finding it really tough to operate or to use computer media. It is not user-friendly, and we have to depend on someone to use the computers. The time has come where the Bill Gates Foundation and the Freedom Scientific have given a golden opportunity for the visually impaired to access computers."

 read more at IBN

Dr. Ekuwem , the President of the Association of Telecommunication Companies of Nigeria pointed out that out of all the cyber cafes that began business with the boom in the Internet business within the tail end of the 20th century in Nigeria , less than 1% is presently in business and out of this percentage while some of them are working under capacity.

 With a view to proffering solutions to the operational challenges facing cyber café operators in Nigeria , ATCON in partnership with Private Media Mart Limited (PMM) has concluded plans to host a Cyber Café survival workshop. According to him, the idea behind the workshop is the need to conduct a business/technology solutions forum for the players in the industry.

Read more @ allafrica.com

About 45 Internet outlets have been bombed since Dec. 1, according to figures from Gaza’s Central Police Office. The attacks are occurring against a backdrop of intense infighting between Fatah, the main faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Hamas, the Islamist party and militia that has grown into the Palestinians’ dominant political force. The street clashes have led to general lawlessness.

A group called the Swords of Islamic Righteousness has claimed responsibility for the attacks. In a leaflet distributed at Al-Azhar University last month, it said it attacked Internet cafes “which are trying to make a whole generation preoccupied with matters other than jihad and worship.”

Read more here(Jihad Watch)

In the West, an Internet cafe is where backpackers go to check email. In China, it's where kids too poor to afford PCs go to kick back and play videogames, chat with their sweethearts and watch movies downloaded off the Internet. Internet cafes are the new places to catch a movie. "You can even smoke," exults one young man.

 "It's very easy to find any movie," says one cafe visitor, who estimates that 20% of users come to the cafes to watch a movie.

"Nearly all of the movie-watching that goes on in Internet cafes, as far as we have observed, is of illegal downloads," says Mike Ellis, senior VP and regional director for Asia-Pacific for the MPA.

Not surprisingly, China's richest cities -- Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai -- are the largest hubs of illegal online film viewing, with annual averages of 16.9, 16.3 and 15.8 films per person, respectively. But folks in the provincial towns and villages are watching, too.

Internet viewing handily beats TV. In a survey by the China Youth Daily and Sina in January, more than 80% of youngsters say the Web is their primary source of entertainment, ahead of TV, at 66%.

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