"Internet giants Google Inc and Facebook removed content from some Indian domain websites on Monday following a court directive warning them of a crackdown “like China” if they did not take steps to protect religious sensibilities. The two are among 21 companies ordered to develop a mechanism to block material considered religiously offensive to the Prophet Mohammed, Jesus and various Hindu gods and goddesses, after private petitioners took them to court over images deemed offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians."

BY ROWLAND CROUCHER AND OTHERS ⋅ JANUARY 27, 2012 ⋅ POST A COMMENT

Rabbi Jason Miller of Michigan regularly officiates Jewish weddings, festive affairs steeped in thousands of years of tradition. But recently, Miller witnessed a unique phenomenon while presiding at a ceremony in Detroit: a wedding that simultaneously integrated two locations separated by thousands of miles and seven time zones.

You probably love your phone, tablet, and other miscellaneous touchscreens—that's why you bought them. But now that we anticipate, live, eat, and sleep with our gadgets, they're being deified. Don't let your fandom turn you fanatical. Relax.

Article from Baptist press:

Apple, Google and other Internet giants are participating in religious discrimination and restricting free speech, according to a new report by the National Religious Broadcasters.

"If Christian content and worldview programming are censored by new media platforms ... the Good News of the Gospel could become one more casualty of institutionalized religious discrimination," said Frank Wright, president of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB). http://nrb.org

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When I first heard a few weeks ago about the website "The Internet is My Religion" at internetismyreligion.com I was excited. Now that I watched its content I feel touched, but less enthusiastic.

In my dayjob I am an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Develop. as such I monitor a number of SEO blogs. On one of them I found a short piece noting that "Google Maps is listing a Catholic church/school in Short Hills, NJ, at the wrong location." The error is simple: Google keeps adding suggesting the word "Old" when you try to look up the location for  "50 Short Hills Rd."

The iPhone app I mentioned a few days ago really grabbed the Vatican's, people's and journalists' attention. Three days after my previous blog entry about it I feel the need to share another batch of related links:

I am not a Catholic and I don't own any i-device (iPad, iPhone iTouch, not even an iPod) but ,my corner of the online world, including the mainstream media is abuzz about "Confession: A Roman Catholic App" so I must cover it. Here is the timeline how I learned about it:

• February 4 - Greenflame's blog entry pointed to the "Forgive me i-Father" piece at stuff.co.nz of the same day. That quotes one of the people behind the app ("his team had wanted to engage Catholics with new media in response to the Pope's World Communications Address last year, in which he spoke of its potential benefits") and his bishop ("Bishop Kevin Rhoades went as far as to grant it an imprimatur - official endorsement from a church authority.")
• February 7 - David Sheppard's (great name for this) report on the app for Reuters under the heading "Bless me iPhone for I have sinned" gave a little more background information ("The app was developed with the help of Reverend Thomas Weinandy of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Reverend Dan Scheidt, pastor of Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Mishawaka, Indiana.")
• February 8 - News about the app showed up on a CNN blog as 'Catholics can confess on the go with new app."
• February 9 - Longer version on CNN proper under "New app helps Catholics confess on the go" and an analysis of it at GetReligion.org as "Time for confession at Times of London". Maureen Dowd  also covered the app for the New York Times under the title "Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Linked".