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When the level of evil plummets my skeptical nature always asserts itself. I wonder, for instance, if Tinhorns the world over aren't taking the week off to apply neat's foot oil to their collection of rubber hoses. We can hope not. But time will tell. And in the meantime, I suppose, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

Grass roots, high tech protests in Indonesia make leadership nervous. 56,000 Indonesians protested via Facebook a statue of U.S. president, Barack Obama, in a Jakarta park. Officials took down the statue agreeing any such construction should honor an Indonesian. A filtering bill was withdrawn from the country's parliament also due to online protest. These are just two examples of pressure brought to bear online. However, a legacy of restricted speech and laws still on the books could be used to shut up the online masses and if history is any guide, they may well be used that way.

While Twitter's growth has slowed down in recent months, new data shows that the popular microblogging service has found a lot of new users outside of the United States. According to new data from social media analytics and monitoring firm Sysomos, the U.S. now accounts for about 50% of all active Twitter users. This is down sharply from 62% in June 2009. The share of Twitter users from Brazil, Indonesia and Germany, however, has grown significantly over the last six months.

InMobi, which is the largest mobile ad network in Asia, Africa, and Indonesia, just released some interesting data regarding mobile web usage which shows that RIM's BlackBerry is leading the pack ahead of Apple's iPhone in Indonesia. Indonesia is one of the world's fastest growing mobile consumer markets and will become the third largest mobile market by 2010. Apple, however, is currently losing the race against BlackBerry in this market. While InMobi saw requests from BlackBerry devices increase by 842% in the first half of 2009, requests from iPhones only increased by 205%.