The Foundation for P2P Alternatives focuses on the sharing economy and the new participatory practices enabled by the new internet-based technologies. We are part of an ecology of information providers and analysts which we integrate in our blogroll at the right side of our blog. Here’s an overview of why we are reading them. The following sources monitor such practices in various field such as media, education, politics and business.

– P2P Media News and Commentary

Audio Activism, audioactivism.org , monitors podcasting as related to activism

Citizen Media, citmedia.org/blog , monitors citizen journalism and user-generated content

Civilities, civilities.net , deeper thinking on what the post-media age means

Future of the Book, futureofthebook.org/blog , excellent blog

Hypergene Mediablog, hypergene.net/blog/weblog.php , useful for regular pointers and links

Publishing 2.0, publishing2.com

Unmediated, unmediated.org , this is the one spot to find aggregated information on the do-it-yourself media

– P2P Business News and Commentary

Bubble Generation, bubblegeneration.com Umair Haque is a genius as regards to the capitalist implications of peer production

Business 2.0,: business2.blogs.com/business2blog , food for venture capitalists, but also for us

Communities Dominate Brands, communities-dominate.blogs.com ; the end of top-down traditional advertising, and the birth of engagement with bottom-up communities; from the authors of an excellent book with the same title

Innovations Commons Network, innovationcommons.blogspot.com , how to innovate beyond the corporation

Long Tail, longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail , how internet media are creating infinite niche markets

Mass Customization, mass-customization.blogs.com , mass individualization of products

Next Billion Net, nextbillion.net , the best overall site on bottom-up capitalism, covers microfinance, social entrepreneurship

Outside Innovation, outsideinnovation.blogs.com ; analyst Seyboldt is still ahead of the consulting game and ‘gets it’

Peer Producers, peerproducers.discursives.com . How can businesses use Web 2.0 and other participatory technologies

Ross Dawson, rossdawsonblog.com , the author of the excellent Living Networks, based in Australia, is a fine analyst of what it all means, and translating it to CEO’s

– P2P Educational News and Commentary

Center for Open and Sustainable Learning, cosl.usu.edu/about , covers open educational resources, textbooks

Connectivism, connectivism.ca/blog ; we do not learn ‘by ourselves’, but through others, and how we connect determines what we can learn; pioneering effort to understand peer-based social learning

Open Education, opencontent.org/blog , monitors open access to content and what it means for education.

Open Access News, http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html , open access to scientific and cultural material, open content initiatives

– P2P Cooperation News and Commentary

Community Intelligence, community-intelligence.com/resou… , George Por is a pioneer in communities of practice and how they are learning vehicles

Cooperation Commons Blog, cooperationcommons.com/cooperati… , an initiative from Howard Rheingold and others, which studies cooperation and how to enhance it

Many to Many, corante.com/many, focuses on social networks and social software

Smart Mobs, smartmobs.com , people connected through mobile and intelligent devices enhance each other’s intelligence; this is one of the most comprehensive sources for news about various participative and mobile developments; from a crew around Howard Rheingold, author of a book of the same title

– P2P Political News and Commentary

Democracies Online, dowire.org/notes ; using technology to enhance democratic practices

Ecodema, economic democracy blog, ecodema.org ; advocacy blog

Global Guerillas, globalguerrillas.typepad.com , amazing coverage of the implications of a-symmetric warfare with the global jihadi’s

Greater Democracy, greaterdemocracy.org , left of center U.S. Democratic Party activists seem to converge here

John Weblowsky, weblogsky.com , long-time network pioneer, student of network advocacy and proponent of ‘extreme democracy’; always of interest

Mutualist Blog, mutualist.blogspot.com ; one of my all-time favorite blogs, which showed me that not all libertarianisms are predatory

On the Commons, onthecommons.org , David Bollier is a pioneer of Commons advocacy and this blogs rocks, just consistently of a very high quality

– P2P Technology News and Commentary

Mashable, mashable.com : covers Web 2.0 mash-ups and revenue sharing

Master New Media, masternewmedia.org . absolute amazing source for technology developments

Tech Crunch, techcrunch.com : reviews of Web 2.0 -based tech advances

Web2.0 News, web2.0news.be