Censorship in China took a new turn with Google un-censoring all the search results. But first tell me which websites and keywords are blocked/censored in China?
Here’s a nice infographic by InformationIsBeautiful which was modified by Guardian which shows up websites and keywords which are censored in China. Image after break, and click to enlarge it!
Google Vs. China. It was bound to happen and it did now. I mean it was happening in the form of cold war but now, everything is public.
Few activist’s from China were hacked by Chinese authorities (mostly) and that the services used by these activists were from Google and Yahoo! prominently. I think Google was planning some sort of answer to chinese authorities and this gave Google an amazing opportunity to speak away.
Google.com was blocked in China years down the line, but later became accessible after 2006 with the launch of Google.cn when Google was asked to censor results because China did not want chinese people to be affected by the “Western Culture”.
Western Culture meant a lot, and Google had to censored so many results in accordance with China. I mean Google had to do it to get into the market of the country which has the largest internet user base of 380+ Million users.
Now the struggle broke out after accounts being hacked and Google has said that they will no longer obey Chinese authorities rules and censor results as they believe in free information for everyone and also they decide to go by their mantra, “Do no evil”.
This could be start of a bigger rebellion later on, but for now Google has threatened Chinese authorities to leave China. Google currently has less then 1000 employees who currently are on holidays.
One of the most important step Google had taken quite early was not storing user data physically in China because if it was so, they would have to submit to the will of China just like what Yahoo! had done leading to imprisonment of chinese activist and reporter.
Google went uncensored after the announcement on it’s blog and thats when the web went on fire. Frankly speaking even if chinese governments let go of Google, it won’t be a big loss to china as Google only has 37% of the search market share while Baidu, has about 58% so bad luck Google.
Well, for other services then search like mail and Android too could be a major loss to China.
Google also won’t have a major loss as the profits they were making in China were not high owing to low market share. This whole act brings up the matter, wasn’t internet supposed to be free access to information and free meaning freedom provided to user? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Image Credit :MyJoyOnline
We knew it was coming. Nokia had posted a complaint against Apple in International Trade Commision (ITC) in US asking ITC to ban all imports on Apple products ranging from Macs, iPods and iPhones and now Apple has come up with another counter attack against the worlds largest producer of Mobile Phones with more infringing patents.
The war had started long time back and now it’s going on and it could be the biggest stories in 2010 if ITC grants any of the companies what they are demanding for, which ITC has already done with Microsofts Word.
The complaint is pending in the ITC and is awaiting review. Soon, the battle will break out like never before because both the parties, Apple and Nokia have huge number of registered patents and it is obvious since both develop products with much similar technology, this could go on for a long time with more and more infringed patents being discovered!
Thanks Engadget.
Nexus one was so much hyped. Termed as iPhone killer but i had written a post as to why Nexus one won’t be a iPhone killer and i think it’s going true. I have got proof this time too.
First week sales recorded for Nexus one were as low as 20,000 units whereas incase of iPhone about 1,600,000 units were sold. You can argue that it was the third generation phone and such that it would surely have lot of people upgrading but you see these huge numbers do speak the truth. Also, i mean look a Motorola’s droid sales too. They sold about 250,000 units first week and i mean it was also a first cellphone of its kind and still the numbers are quite better than Nexus one.
3G connectivity problems have seemed to worsened problems for Apple and also currently, the biggest factor affecting Nexus one sales could be iPhone 4G rumors in a way because currently a general consumers mindset could be that why not wait for something better and then buy the best among them, and so this though could be stopping large number of customers from buying it now though i don’t deny that Nexus One sales could pick up later.
Nexus one has also got a blow as it’s availability is also less, and it’s only available online for ordering. If they decide to go offline ever then they could expect a lot more sales. In terms of advertising, they’ve not done some big deal and i hope do something about it compared to it’s competitors.
Via Flurry.
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As I said, it is exciting to know, its a superb news for the School students in Britain. The Government is planning to include Facebook and Twitter to their curriculum.
The subject is called ‘English Studies: Digital Communication’ where students will have to study the websites as per school curriculum plans for a new English GCSE.
“This qualification builds on students’ interests in digital texts and proved to excite and engage both boys and girls in our pilot. It reflects the changing needs and interests of learners,” a government spokesman said.
Students could take on the subject as stand alone or study it along with English and other subjects.
Editors Note (Monik Pamecha) : This is surely very interesting because students, i mean most of writers on our blog, Etiole are youngsters from age 13-19 so if we get a chance to study them, we would surely score pretty high marks as we spend most of our time on it! Another advantage of teaching students such things would be actually preparing them for the practical world and if one knows how to use social networks properly, one can surely build a strong PR!
Via Telegraph and image credit : thebrandbuilder.
Iranian Cyber Army, the most popular hackers these days who had managed to hack into Twitter and change the homepage to something what people did not want.
Something similar did happen to China’s biggest search Engine, Baidu. Recently, the search engine’s homepage had that nasty picture, somewhat which was on Twitter too saying that the website was hacked because of Iranian Cyber Army.
The reason for Twitter being hacked was because of the Iran Politics buzz on twitter. Why was baidu hacked? No idea say chinese security experts.
The DNS records had been played with. At first they had been changed to Yahoo, then to some other nameservers, and this battle went on for 3 hours till the Baidu engineers finally managed to get complete control.
The worst outcome of this whole hacking event was that Google China’s traffic had increased by nearly 31% because of millions of users dropping baidu for the time being and using Google china! What next could be hacked? Possibly facebook?
Guy’s at TechCrunch found a security flaw in Motorola Droids running on Android 2.0.1 Why you ask?
Well, if you come across the phone’s lock screen there’s this lock mechanism which is pretty cool to play with it, but there is a serious bug which allows anyone now knowing the verification code to get access to your cellphone data.
If you get there is incoming call then simply pressing the dedicated back button then it takes you to the home screen bypassing the security code, so now you can play with anyone’s data.
We know. Google also knows and they are working on it. Hopefully, the solution should come out as fast as next week!
Guys, this is not a rumor. Recently, Stéphane Richard Vice President of Orange France in a informal press talk with Europe Radio 1 was questioned about Apple Tablet.
He was asked if any Tablet was coming out this month? Guess what he answered? He said a yes!
Later he was asked if this was coming to Orange, and he said Sure! Now this gives a clear indication that something like the Apple Tablet is cooking!
Here’s the video thanks to Engadget and SlashGear, where the the news was broken.
Sony Bloggie? What’s this? Some sort of blogging software? or wait, a blogging gadget? Social Networking website?
What’s in store is nearly unguessable from it’s name. But frankly, how does the name matter anyway? Having a good name with worthless functions is of no use, but how about superstars coming with worse names?
Dah. Sony did it. This is the case with the new Sony MP4 + camcorder Bloggie.
The product has got brilliance in design and intellectuality in mechanism. Its got excellency in sharing, capturing and uploading videos.
This is a true flip video competitor, and now maybe a iPod Nano competitor too! One of it’s biggest advantage is a Unique Swivel Lens (moves 270 degrees!) and a HD camera.
Pricing for bloggie is $199 with 5X zoom and $169 without the zoom. It’s got a complete integration with social media, facebook, twitter, youtube, picasa and so on. Also now you don’t need to use cables to connect your device to your computer, it’s got a inbuilt USB arm (a major life saver!).
Some of its Features are-
