Watching Egypt online as it goes offline

Internet and cellphone lines may be shut down in Egypt, but the technological blackout has done little to stifle news leaking to the outside world. The web is abuzz with live TV streams, tweets, info graphics and on-scene reports.

Here's a roundup of some of the beststandoutwebsites and features covering the anti-government demonstrations.

Live coverage

Among the most rivetinglive TV coverage was on Al-Jazeera's website. TheArabic news agencyalsocompiledamateur videos from the street, created maps showing thegeographic spread of protestswithin Egyptandhosted a Flickrcompilation of photos.

BBC, on the other hand, took amore multi-media approach, streaming its TV coverage alongside Twitterand adding relevant links.

Naturally, thego-to website forlive coverage was Twitter, despite service disruptions to the cellular networks and many internet connectionsin Egyptpreventing many citizens from posting online. To circumvent the usual channels, some people used satellite internet connections. CNN'sBen Wedeman(@cnnben) has continued tweeting despite the internet lockdown, as has Al-Jazeera's Dan Nolan (@nolanjazeera ). Othersworth following are noted onCBC's Twitter list set upfor the Egypt protests.

The trendingtweetmost illustrativeof the clampdownso far was this:

The internet shutdown

Perhaps the singular most gripping graphic showing the suddencommunications shutdown in Egypt was a chart by Craig Labovitz, chief scientist for the internet security company Arbor Networks. The precipitous drop chartedin MBps megabits per second, a measurement of the flow of information online occurred around 5:20 p.m. ET Jan. 27, or 12:20 a.m. local time Jan. 28. Here's the most recent graph created by Labovitz:

Beyond the live coverage

Online communication is often touted asa great enabler ofdemocracy and freedom of speech. But despite the ubiquitous nature of the net, it was surprisingly easy for Egypt to flip the switch and shut down access to it.A blog by GigaOM looks athow the governmentmay have orchestrated the wide-scale shutdown.

The Atlantic goes further and examines thephysical web of connections that make up the world wide web. Could the Egypt shutdown be a sign of things to come?

The magazine also postedan apparent protest primer circulated by Egyptian activistsahead of Friday's planned demonstrations.Makers of the26-page pamphleturged people todistribute it within the country via email, printing and good old fashioned photocopying, rather thanTwitter and Facebook, easily scrutinized by government. The document details how best to gather in the street, what kind of protective clothing and accessories to have and ways to thwart armoured trucks.