Within 24 hours of the rerouting, Beijing has clamped down, restricting mainland users’ access to the uncensored content on the Hong Kong site. Mainland Chinese users on Tuesday could not see uncensored Hong Kong content because government computers either disabled searches for objectionable content completely or blocked links to certain results [The New York Times]. Earlier, the Chinese government described Google’s move to redirect users to the Hong Kong site as “totally wrong.”

The clash comes two months after Google and China began a bitter standoff over internet censorship on the mainland. Instead of exiting the country entirely, Google has taken on Beijing by defying its censorship controls and sending mainland users to its Hong Kong site, where censorship rules are more lenient.

While the move seemed provocative, Google’s founders at first seemed to think that this redirection would be acceptable to the Chinese government. “We got reasonable indications that this was O.K.,” Sergey Brin, a Google founder and its president of technology, said. “We can’t be completely confident” [The New York Times]. Google said that while the search operations were being redirected to Hong Kong, it would continue to host its maps and music search service in China. However, it now seems that the company misjudged the Chinese government’s mood.

Read the rest of my post for Discover Magazine here.

Even as Google takes the high ground in China over censorship, the authorities’ high-handed behavior over another case, titillatingly called “The case of the Karaoke Singer” has managed to get the Press, Activists and indeed Chinese talking about censorship.

It all started when a reporter for the commercial affiliate of party newspaper People’s Daily asked the Governor of Hubei province, Li Honzhong, a question that would pass as probing in Western news conferences. The reporter, believed to be Liu Jie, asked the Governor outside a conference chamber at the Great Hall of the People for his thoughts on the case of the 21-year old karaoke waitress who had fatally stabbed a local party official when he and his friend tried to force her into sex. The New York Times reports that despite official efforts to suppress the scandal, the waitress’s arrest on murder charges incited online fury, drawing worldwide attention and turning the waitress into a national hero. The charges were reduced, and she was freed without serving a prison term.

However, on hearing the question on the prickly scandal, the Governor erupted at the reporter, asking her to identify which paper she wrote for. On hearing that she wrote for the party mouthpiece, People’s Daily, he charged at her and grabbed her recorder and left, according to the independent Beijing magazine Caijing. The report on Caijing’s website lasted less than 24 hours, before being pulled off by Chinese authorities. However, a protest letter about the incident has been making the rounds, garnering more than a 1000 signatures–calling the legislature to investigate the Governor’s actions and ask him to resign. However, experts are skeptical of any harsh punishment being meted out to one of the party’s own, writes The Times.

The fate of the reporter too is unknown. The Times writes that prior to the meeting at the Great Hall, the Communist party handed out a long list of topics–off limits for reporters. The list included ‘not publishing bad news on the front page,’ staying away from reporting on the poisonous cowpea incident in which cowpea poisoned with toxic pesticide was shipped for use across China and more importantly, also placed the case of the Karaoke singer off limits.

Guess the reporter never got that memo.

But one can presume Google did and refused to drink the kool aid.

That must be why Topeka, Kansas changed its name to “Google” for a month; the city hopes it will be chosen as a test site for Google’s new fiber-optic network, which would give Topeka residents Internet speeds 100 times faster than what average Americans have.

On Monday, the Mayor of Topeka announced that the city shall, henceforth, be referred to as Google, Kansas, through the month of March. Google is accepting entries from communities looking for an Internet upgrade till March 26th, after which it will decide which communities will get a bump up.

Topeka’s new name is just the beginning of the city going ga-ga for Google. The local baseball team decided to step up to the plate too; the Topeka Golden Giants baseball team announced it has changed its name for March to the Google Golden Giants. Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins (R-Kansas) tweeted “Can’t wait to get home to Google this weekend,” and The Topeka Capital Journal reported that even the local barbecue stop, Boss Hawg Barbecue, was renaming itself as Boss Hawg Google-Q.

However Topeka… sorry, Google, Kansas has stiff competition from other communities like Grand Rapids, Michigan, Duluth, Minnesota, and Columbia, Missouri.

Businessweek reports that other cities are planning their own stunts:
The city of Greensboro, N.C., is preparing an “Operation Google” gift package for delivery to Google headquarters and has earmarked $50,000 for promoting a Google broadband effort.

Not just that, the magazine reports that Greensboro plans to launch a channel on Google’s own YouTube to pitch why their town needs a net upgrade. The Assistant City Manager Denise Turner told Businessweek: “The city may even temporarily rechristen itself Googlesboro “if Google were willing to come here and talk to us.”

Read the rest of my piece for Discover Magazine here.

The Italian court, however, still held them responsible for the video and sentenced them to suspended six-month sentences. Experts say the case sets a dangerous precedent, and could dramatically restrict online content in Italy.

Thousands of people post videos each hour on YouTube and Google Video, and various court cases have questioned whether Google, which owns YouTube, is liable for every video that infringes on someone’s copyright or is deemed offensive to its viewers.

Google has argued that it’s only liable if offensive material stays up on its site despite complaints against it, and says that if the company takes complained-about videos down, it has no legal liability–like the rules it faces under U.S. law. Italy apparently disagrees.

The case pertains to a video that was posted to Google Video in 2006 showing four youths in Turin bulling a 17-year old who suffers either from Down Syndrome or autism (reports vary). The video received 12,000 views before the Italian police brought it to Google’s notice.

The company immediately took it down, and Google then helped the cops find the person who uploaded it, resulting in the identification (and school expulsion) of the four bullies. But the Google executives, who include David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president and chief legal officer, and George Reyes, Google’s former chief financial officer, were charged and convicted for criminal defamation and a failure to protect the privacy of the bullied teen.

Read the rest of my post for Discover Magazine here.

This is where old decommissioned aircraft from the US military go to die. It’s an enormous graveyard of planes. Nicknamed “The Boneyard” the location just outside Tuscon covers 2,600 acres and houses over 4200 military aircraft valued at a whopping $35 billion dollars (Hmm..maybe if the US could sell all these birds as scrap to China, maybe they could make some cash off it. Just a thought)

The base holds a whole range old aircraft–from B-52s, B-1s and F-111s that once carried nuclear arms. There are also, tons of F-14 Tomcats and PopSci reports that they spotted F-15s, F-16s, C-130s, KC-135 refueling tankers, A-10s.

This is truly exciting and I am most excited Google Earth has released these pictures. There goes the rest of my afternoon! Click here for a supersize close-up of The Boneyard.

DISCOVER magazine’s Carl Zimmer responded by taking the opposite stance, and declaring that Google is making us smarter. He argued that humans are “natural born cyborgs” and the internet is our “giant extended mind.” He wrote that there was “nothing unnatural about relying on the internet—Google and all—for information…. Nor is there anything bad about our brains’ being altered by these new technologies, any more than there is something bad about a monkey’s brain changing as it learns how to play with a rake.”

Now, a new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project agrees with Zimmer; it found that Google is indeed making us smarter by allowing us to make better choices. More than 76 percent of the 895 experts polled said Nicholas Carr was wrong in thinking that Google made us stupid.

Read the rest of my post for Discover magazine here.

January data released on compete.com now shows that the social networking site Facebook had a whopping 134 unique visitors in January.  Fb seems to be galloping ahead, collecting not just eyeballs but also engaging its visitors in a way that Google and Yahoo can’t. The January figures show that in that month, 11.6% of all time spent online was spent on Fb ( Yahoo had 4.25 % and Google 4.1%)

So if Facebook is advancing ahead, the geeks at Google aren’t sitting back and checking email–they are, as one journalist pointed out, advancing their tanks across Facebook’s lawns.  Last week saw the disastrous but interesting roll-out of Google buzz that taps into existing Gmail contacts to create a social networking system of its own, then Google bought up Aardvark-another site that lets users “tap the knowledge of people in your network.”

But whether Google manages to trounce Facebook is anyone’s guess. Already, The Times points out FB has 400 million active users (that is up from 200 last summer-Observer.com) who share five billion pieces of content a week and upload more than three billion photos each month. On an average, the report says, people spend more than 55 minutes a day on Facebook – and that is an advertising goldmine. As we also spend more time on our iPhone, iPads and the like- money is quite literally where the mobile is and there are millions others who use their mobile to access Facebook than get on Google.

So what is the future for the two big giants? We don’t know yet. But we’ll keep an eye out-between our Googling and updating status on Facebook.

You might also be interested in:
Twitter Goes To The Dogs, Literally
Facebook Is Taking Over The World
Why You Should Google Yourself

The internet giant strutted into China four years ago, lured by the huge growth potential in the white-hot market.

Google succeeded for a while, till China’s press censorship and internet hackers wore the giant down. Now, it is bailing out.

But is press censorship the only reason why Google is bailing?

Not quite, says The Economist. It points out that while Google could never break the stranglehold of the Chinese search giant Baidu, it also suffered losses when Google’s other  non-censored enterprises like YouTube, Picasa and Blogger came under the authoritarian regime’s scanner.

As The Economist adds:

Google’s frustrations are widely shared. Before the Olympic games in Beijing in August 2008, China lifted longstanding blocks on several websites in an effort to present a more open image to visitors. Since then, controls have been stepped up to unprecedented levels. Internet access throughout the western region of Xinjiang has been all but cut off since the eruption of ethnic riots there in July. The unrest also prompted a nationwide closure of foreign social-networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

The role of such sites in Iran’s upheaval in June had already alarmed the government. Its fear of dissent erupting around the 60th anniversary in October of the founding of communist China prompted even greater vigilance against sensitive debate online. Since then there has been no sign of relaxation. In recent weeks, officials have tightened restrictions on the registration of websites under the .cn domain name (businesses only may apply). A crackdown on internet pornography has led to closer scrutiny by internet-service providers of non-porn websites.

So not just access to news but also PORN! The last straw, I am sure for Chinese internet surfers!

But Google getting out of China is a stark reminder, that in China, what you see is not what you get.

Read more about the Chinese governament’s extreme secrecy, paranoia and media manipulation in my in-depth piece here.

Haha…no! It won’t..but I like to be alarmist about these things.

But take a look at the new phone, the Nexus One. According to people who got an early trial by Google, it’s like an Android Version of the Iphone.

The BBC reports:

It will be sold via Google’s website and initially be available on T-mobile in America followed by Vodafone in Europe and Verizon in the US.

Direct from Google it will cost $529 (£331) and on contract with T-Mobile $179 (£112). Google said the phone would ship from launch day.

Mario Queiroz, Google vice president for product management, described the unveiling as “the next stage in the evolution of Android”.

Mr Queiroz said there were now more than 20 Android phones available from 59 carriers in 48 nations.

Read more here.

Read Wired’s review here.

Google yourself regularly to map and tweak your online image

When my best friend was visiting, I got her a t-shirt that read “Sometimes when I am alone, I google myself.” In the early days of the search engine, that seemed like a really funny joke.

But these days, googling yourself  is not a mere vanity, it’s almost essential, especially if you’re looking for a job.

Most employers will agree that once the stork delivers your resume into their hands, the first thing they do is check your online presence. So, Bam! Google!

And if the only thing that pops up in their search are racy pictures from your Spring break or incriminating, nasty posts about your co-workers, then that could potentially be a red light for your employers.

So, here is a list of Top Online Turnoffs I came across in Richmond magazine.

Profanity: If you wouldn’t say it in front of your grandmother or on national television, don’t post it online. It may actually end up in front of your grandmother or on national television, or — just as bad ­­— a recruiter.

Inconsistency: When you put online resumes and bios on LinkedIn, Facebook or your blog, make sure they match what you have in print. If you tweak anything, tweak it consistently.

All Play and No Work: Fool around all you want on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. But be sure to mix in some online business — join some industry organizations, actively participate and tweet positive things about your work.

The magazine says it doesn’t help to be totally paranoid and log off Facebook forever. In fact, some recruiters get dissapointed when they look for you online and can’t find your Facebook page. “

“Recruiters want to see pictures of you interacting with others,” says one recruiter in the piece, “they want to see that you are a team player.”

So get going, Google yourself and mend that online image.