Google Can’t Seem to Quit China

Google doesn’t really want to be out of China it appears. Despite a principled stand against censorship and the subsequent revelation that Chinese government surrogates were behind GMail hacking the company is contemplating a “return” to the Chinese market.

In fact it’s still there but in a half-hearted way.

Google CFO Patrick Pichette told the Times of London that the hacking episode last year that resulted in Google no longer complying with Chinese censorship restrictions was simply a “roadblock.”  Pichette is quoted in the Times (via Fox Business) saying, “China has 1.2 billion people. For Google to say, ‘We’re going to live on our mission, but not serve 1.2 billion people’ — it just doesn’t work. China wants Google.”

Beyond the notion of serving Chinese internet users, Google is finding it very difficult to resist the lure of the largest internet and mobile market in the world — and the potential revenue that it represents.

Baidu reportedly had a 73 percent share of the Chinese search market in Q3, while Google had 21.6 percent. Google now has an 8.9 percent share of the current Chinese advertising market, behind Baidu and portal Alibaba.

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Top 10 Things We Learned About SEO in 2010 - Whitebeard Friday

Video Transcription

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Oh, hi there, boys and girls! I didn't see you there. Welcome to White Beard Friday.

Every year here at SEOmoz we like to have a tradition where I don this ridiculous white beard and present some interesting SEO stuff to you. So, I want to do that again today. I figured it would be a good time, it's the end of the year, and 2010 is coming to a close. We have learned a lot about SEO this year. I think it would be a great idea to talk about some of the great things that we have learned. I even might have a bonus number 11 for you.

First off, number one, search is here to stay. I think that a lot of prognosticators for years have been saying, "Oh, this whole Web 2.0 thing and this social thing, these are going to take over the SEO world or the search world. People are not going to be searching as much. They're going to be using Twitter and Facebook to find the things that they want. They're going to use these alternative sources. Maybe they're going to turn to Q&A sites." Mm. Until the data shows otherwise, here's what we've seen. Basically, every year there are more searches, there are more searchers, and there are more searches per searcher. That suggests a behavior where people are happier, not more frustrated, with the results that they're getting. You and I and the tech elite set might be thinking to ourselves, "Yeah, you know, some of these results aren't as good and maybe I can get some better recommendations here or there." But for your vast majority of search users both in the U.S. and around the world, searches just keep going up. I think that's certainly a good thing from an SEO perspective. It's definitely a great thing if you are Google or Bing or you are thinking about competing in this area.

Number two, social and search are interconnected. In fact, in ways that I think we surmised but did not realize fully or did not have confirmation of until just recently. We now know that at least with Twitter and Facebook those two services, the tweets that you send, the links that are in those tweets, the Facebook shares that Google can see through their index, those are influencing SEO directly in Google and Bing's results. They're using those signals to help know which pages to rank and how to rank them. This experiment that Danny Dover performed recently with SEOmoz with the SeeYourImpact site showed that, boy, the one that got about 20 or 30 different links is not performing and the one that got 450 tweets is ranking number one. This strongly suggests that those Twitter signals could be quite powerful, in fact, more powerful than we might suspect today. Whether they last a long time is yet to be seen. We don't know whether over time their power fades.

Number three, mentions can trigger crawling and indexing. This is something I haven't presented data on yet. It is something very interesting that we've been able to observe. Now we have, in my mind, very good evidence. Very, very strong evidence, direct evidence that if a brand is mentioned or a website name is mentioned in the press, but it isn't linked to, that mention will trigger Googlebot to start crawling that site like crazy and perhaps even inflating their rankings. We've seen some data with some local startups here where their new brand was mentioned, specifically in The Wall Street Journal, literally within sub few minutes of the RSS feed pushing out, like less than five minutes, Googlebot hit their site very, very hard. They didn't have any other activity, and they don't usually get crawled like this. They sort of saw some extra search traffic from it. So, very good suspicion that Googlebot's a comin' to town if you get your brand mentioned in the press, even if they're not linking.

Number four, Bing and Yahoo are not a Google killer. I think that a lot of people thought, hey, you know, when Bing and Yahoo come together . . . maybe not a lot of people. Some people, some industry press folks thought when Bing and Yahoo came together, they're going to own 30% of the market share. Maybe they can start to grow that. Bing had been growing market share up to that point. It looks like Bing was mostly cannibalizing Yahoo's market share. By and large this year, Google has been the benefactor of most of the growth. Right now we're living in, according to comScore, something like a 70%-30% world where Bing and Yahoo are responsible for about 30%, and Google is about 70%. You know my take on comScore data. Basically, what they're showing is all the searches performed on the networks, not the traffic that's coming out. If you look at traffic coming out, this is more like maybe a 15% or 20%, and this is something like 80-85% for Google.

Number five, there's new search engines still emerging. I think after the death of Cuil, a lot of people were sort of like, "Oh man, no one's going to try to compete in that space unless they're huge." And yet, this year we saw the launch of Blekko. We saw the launch of Yandex's English language results. And we've seen continued popularity and growth for DuckDuckGo, which is sort of a relatively long-standing search engine. It's been around for a few years now from Gabriel on Hacker News. There's quite a bit of popularity around it. All of these are potentially interesting. I think a lot of people would say maybe the most interesting among these for SEOs is Blekko, which is sort of opening up how they do their search results' calculations, how their algorithm works, providing some link data. It could be very interesting. Their index is still small right now, but it could get really interesting over time.

Number six, Google is very intent on competing in the local space. The Places launch. The move of Marissa Meyer over to local from running search strongly suggests that Google cares a tremendous amount about the maps and the local space and that they really want to invest there. They tried to buy Groupon. They made that offer last year to Yelp. They clearly care about local. But, I think I'm going to argue, Yelp is still way, way better at this. If I'm looking for a restaurant, a salon, an office supply store, Yelp just has, not more business listings necessarily, but the fact that they are willing to show how they filter and organize results and how you can sort things and filter, how you can find reviews about the place, etc., it's just a much better experience than Maps has today. So, I think Google Maps has a long way to go if they want to catch up and play in this space. They're really winning right now on the fact that lots of people just use Google as a search engine source and then get to these results, so Google can put their stuff in front of them.

Number seven, alternative data sources are going to be found for what's gone missing with Yahoo and Yahoo Sites bar. As Yahoo has gone into the Bing world and as they spin down Site Explorer this year, the Site Explorer API's going to turn off, Yahoo will no longer be maintaining a web index at the end of 2012, people have turned to other places to get this sort of link domain stuff. They've done clever stuff with Linkscape data from here at SEOmoz through Open Site Explorer and that kind of stuff. There is also Majestic SEO. Blekko is now providing some link data. People are starting to do some crawls on their own. There are lots of sources. I don't think that the death of Yahoo Site Explorer will be quite as painful once it does hit as we might have presumed previously.

Number eight, we did some cool topic modeling. Remember the stuff around LDA this year, and found that, yes, there is probably a good chance that topic modeling is something the engines are doing and are using to rank results. Over time, we as SEOs might be able to learn more about this process and do a better job at serving both engines and users with the content we provide to both. Just being more relevant with the words and phrases we're employing. Making sure to talk about the things that people care about when they are researching a topic.

Number nine, Google is still struggling, struggling hard, against link spam manipulation. But, on the plus side, depending on your position, maybe it's on the bad side, they know it. They know that they're having a tough time. Matt has talked about this at PubCon that the webspam team is coming back together and they're going to be working very hard on this for the next few months or few years. So it's possible that in 2012 we'll see a lot more action being taken against this link spam issue, buying links, getting manipulative links, using link farms, and these kinds of things. I think it remains to be seen whether Google can pull this one out. It's going to be a tough battle. Adversarial information retrieval is just an incredibly tough art and science.

Number ten, last but not least, SEOs, man, we still don't get no respect. I don't know what's up. It's the Rodney Dangerfield here for us. In 2010, estimates are that between Bing and Google there's going to be about 20 billion advertising dollars spent on paid search and that receives about, maybe around 15% of all the clicks, so 15% of traffic. SEO, which receives about 85% of all the clicks, the spend is predicted by some people to be around $2 billion, maybe a little under $2 billion this year. That includes consulting, software, in-house SEOs. Man! We've got a long way to go. On the plus side, if you're in SEO and you're looking at this and you're getting depressed, you shouldn't be. This is a growth industry. There is no way that something like this lasts forever. You know how you can trust it? Because look how big this beard is.

All right. Well, everyone, it has been a great year. It's been our pleasure to join you for it. We're looking forward to seeing you again next week and next year for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Ho, ho, ho!

Video transcription by SpeechPad.com

 

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Apple positions iAd producer as Adobe Flash alternative

Apple has released iAd Producer, a new tool for designing interactive “rich media ads” using web standards for distribution through its iAd network within iOS apps, in a direct blow to Adobe's Flash developer tools, the current standard among many web and mobile ad designers. 

Apple's new HTML5 development tool graphically lays out the structure and flow of iAd elements within an iOS advertisement in a “powerful visual editing canvas,” the company states in its announcement aimed at developers.

The new tool incorporates a variety of technologies from Xcode, Apple's Integrated Development Environment for Mac and iOS software.

At the introduction of Xcode 4 this summer, AppleInsider projected that the company's increasingly sophisticated, graphical software development tool could portend new HTML5 development tools, specifically noting that “one example of how the company's significant investments in creating Xcode 4 could be applied is in shipping a web development tool aimed at creating HTML5 content for the web and for use within web-based tools such as Apple's iAd mobile advertising program.”

The new iAd Producer development tool provides more than a dozen templates for creating page views, including Cover Flow and carousel image galleries and geographic maps. A variety of interface components are also provided to enable developers to add media playback controls, standard buttons, sliders and switches, progress indicators and flip views without needing to write any code.

iAd Producer also enables developers to easily add animated transitions and effects to their artwork and pages, and catalogs media assets used in iAd projects, such as graphics, videos, and SVG fonts. The resulting content acts as a self-contained HTML5 website that can be inserted into existing iOS apps to present an interactive advertising experience.

(Source: AppleInsider) 

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Televison Meet Internet

Google and Intel have teamed with Sony to develop a platform called Google TV to bring the Web into the living room through a new generation of televisions and set-top boxes.

The move is an effort by Google and Intel to extend their dominance of computing to television, an arena where they have little sway. For Sony, which has struggled to retain a pricing and technological advantage in the competitive TV hardware market, the partnership is an effort to get a leg up on competitors.

The partners envision technology that will make it as easy for TV users to navigate Web applications, like the Twitter social network and the Picasa photo site, as it is to change the channel.

Some existing televisions and set-top boxes offer access to Web content, but the choice of sites is limited. Google intends to open its TV platform, which is based on its Android operating system for smartphones, to software developers. The company hopes the move will spur the same outpouring of creativity that consumers have seen in applications for cellphones.

Google is expected to deliver a toolkit to outside programmers within the next couple of months, and products based on the software could appear as soon as this summer.

The three companies have tapped Logitech, which specializes in remote controls and computer speakers, for peripheral devices, including a remote with a tiny keyboard.

The project, which has been under way for several months, was described by people with knowledge of it. They requested anonymity because the partners were not allowed to speak publicly at this point, and details remained under negotiation.

Spokesmen for Google, Intel and Logitech declined to comment. A Sony spokesman said he was not familiar with the project. The companies appear to be hiring for Android-related jobs. Intel, for example, has listed jobs for senior application engineers with Android programming experience who can help extend Intel’s technology “from PC screen to mobile screen and TV screen.” Logitech also has several job listings for Android developers, including a position for an “embedded software engineer” with experience building “audio and video products based on the Android platform.”

Jacob Hsu, chief executive of Symbio, a contract engineering firm that does work for consumer electronics companies, said there was rising interest in set-top box technology among the traditional computing players. “The boxes are just getting more and more powerful, so there’s more you can do with them,” he said.
For Google, the project is a pre-emptive move to get a foothold in the living room as more consumers start exploring ways to bring Web content to their television sets. Google wants to aggressively ensure that its services, in particular its search and advertising systems, play a central role.

“Google wants to be everywhere the Internet is so they can put ads there,” said one of the people with knowledge of the project.

Based on Google’s Android operating system, the TV technology runs on Intel’s Atom chips.
Google has built a prototype set-top box, but the technology may be incorporated directly into TVs or other devices.

 The Google TV software will present users with a new interface for TVs that lets them perform Internet functions like search while also pulling down Web programming like YouTube videos or TV shows from Hulu.com. The technology will also allow downloadable Web applications, like games and social networks, to run on the devices.

A person with knowledge of the project said that Google TV would use a version of Google’s Chrome Web browser, which currently does not work on Android phones.

Google’s efforts to break into television advertising date back three years. Through a program called Google TV Ads, the company sells advertising on a handful of satellite and small cable television systems, as well as some cable networks. Google says thousands of advertisers have signed up for the program, but analysts say they believe the amount of revenue generated is too small to have a significant impact on Google’s overall business.

The partners will face a crowded field. In addition to the makers of traditional cable and satellite set-top boxes, Cisco Systems and Motorola, many others have entered the game, including Microsoft, Apple, TiVo and start-up companies like Roku and Boxee, which already stream video from Netflix, MLB.com and other Web sites directly to television sets. Yahoo is also promoting a TV platform that uses small software programs called widgets to use certain Web services.

Anthony Wood, founder and chief executive of Roku, said that a browser-based Google TV box would require an expensive chip and would probably cost $200 or more, compared with a cheaper alternative, like Roku’s $80 device. The device streams content from more than a dozen sites, including Netflix, Blip.TV and Amazon.com. Moreover, “on the TV, people want specific TV apps, not a browser experience,” he said.

For Intel, the effort represents a way to get its line of energy-efficient Atom chips, currently found in laptops, into TVs. Intel executives have talked for a couple of years about creating PC-like TVs, contending that it will take the horsepower of a mainstream chip to play high-definition movies well on bigger screens. Any success with TVs would help Intel get into a new, high-volume market and possibly offset some of the pressure the company now feels from rivals creeping up into computers.

The Google TV software will be open source at its core, meaning that device and TV makers should have broad access to it.

Sony, however, hopes to gain an edge over competitors by bringing out the first appliances and possibly TVs running the software, perhaps under a new brand. The Japanese consumer electronics giant, which owns Sony Pictures, is not expected to put its movie content directly on the devices but will probably have a link to a digital store.

A person with knowledge of the Google TV project said that the set-top box technology was advanced enough that Google had begun a limited test with Dish Network, one of Google’s partners in the TV Ads program. A spokeswoman for Dish Network declined to comment. This month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google and Dish were testing a TV program search service.

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Google stops censoring search results in China

Google has stopped censoring its search results in China, ignoring warnings by the country's authorities.

The US company said its Chinese users would be redirected to the uncensored pages of its Hong Kong website.

In January, Google had complained about a "sophisticated cyber attack originating from China". 

China accused Google of violating a "written promise" it made when entering the market to abide by laws requiring it to filter its search service. 

A Chinese official was quoted by the state-run Xinhua news agency as saying Google's decision to ignore the promise regarding its Chinese-language search portal Google.cn was "totally wrong". 

The White House said it was dismayed that Google and China had not been able to resolve their differences. 

US National Security spokesman Mike Hammer said: "We are disappointed that Google and the Chinese government were unable to reach an agreement that would allow Google to continue operating its search services in China on its Google.cn website." 

Chinese government officials had warned Google repeatedly that it would face consequences if it did not comply with the country's censorship rules. 

In a blog post, the company said the Chinese government had been "crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement". 

Slowdowns

Google Inc. Share Price change [-0.45%]

Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, said that providing "uncensored search" from Google.com.hk was "a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced - it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China". 

It said there might be some service slowdowns and delays in getting search results while it beefs up resources to handle the re-directed queries. 

"We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services," Mr Drummond wrote in the blog post. 

He added that Google would carefully monitor access and provide regular updates via a dedicated page to show what was available via its services in mainland China. 

One cause of the row was Google's revelation on 12 January that it - and more than 20 other companies - had been the victim of a cyber attack that originated inside China. 

During the attack Google lost some intellectual property and discovered that the attack was aimed at the GMail accounts of human rights activists. This attack led Google to "review the feasibility" of its Chinese operations. 

In the blog entry posted on 22 March, Google said it would maintain an R&D and sales presence in China.

It said the size of its sales team would depend on how many Chinese people can get at the Hong Kong-based site. Currently about 700 of Google's 20,000 strong workforce are based in China. 

Opportunity cost

Baidu is the market leader for online search in China

On Sunday, state media in China had attacked Google for what they described as the company's "intricate ties" with the US government.

Google provided US intelligence agencies with a record of its search engine results, Xinhua said.

While Google is the world's most popular search engine, it is a distant number two in the Chinese market, which is dominated by Baidu. 

However, because of the size and growth rate of China's internet population, any loss of business there is likely to harm Google's future growth prospects. 

Analysts said that initially Google's prospects would not be dented by shutting down Google.cn as it is responsible, at most, for 2% of its annual $24bn (£15.9bn) revenue. 

"Near-term, not that big a deal," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management. "Long-term, if this stays in place, it's a negative. China is certainly a great growth opportunity." 

China operates one of the most sophisticated and wide-reaching censorship systems in the world. 

Thousands of police officers are employed to monitor web activity and many automated systems watch blogs, chat rooms and other sites to ensure that banned subjects, such as Tiananmen Square, are not discussed.

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United States Internet Speed is on the Decline.

According to Akamai’s Q3 State of the Internet report, the United States’ internet speed did not qualify for a place in the top ten list of countries with the fastest internet in the world, and its average overall speed has actually decreased by 2.4% year-over-year from 2008 to 2009.

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The United States actually ranked 18th out of 203 nations tested in terms of average connection speeds, falling behind speed leaders like South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong.

When looked at from a global perspective, the results are quite positive. The report states:

“The global average connection speed is once again increasing, after an unusual drop in the second quarter. The average connection speed of 1.7 Mbps returns it to a level consistent with the first quarter of 2009. South Korea maintained its position as the country with the highest average connection speed, and was joined by Ireland as one of two countries in the top 10 posting quarterly gains of greater than 25% (on top of minor quarterly gains also seen in the second quarter). Romania, Sweden, and the Czech Republic all saw quarterly declines in their average connection speeds, though they all maintained positive yearly growth. While the United States saw a small quarterly gain in average connection speeds, increasing to 3.9 Mbps, from a year-over-year perspective, the trend is negative, though just slightly so.”

If you live in Delaware, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, or Utah you can be quite pleased with your region’s Q3 performance as they each increased upwards of 15% in average connection speed from Q2 measurements.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Akamai, the company serves as a distributed computing platform for companies worldwide. Their quarterly State of the Internet report analyzes data gathered from their global server network and covers security, internet penetration, mobile internet, average connection speeds and broadband connectivity.

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HP Acquires Networking Giant 3Com for $2.7 Billion

Technology powerhouse Hewlett Packard (HP) has just announced that it has struck a deal to acquire 3Com, one of the world’s leading networking hardware and software companies, for a giant $2.7 billion price tag.

The deal, if it goes through, will bring HP into direct competition with Cisco and its networking business. 3com builds WiFi access points, networking switches, routers, and IP voice systems that countless businesses rely on every day. It also comes two years after a failed acquisition by Bain Capital.

The full press release from HP is included below:

HP and 3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS) (“3Com”) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase 3Com, a leading provider of networking switching, routing and security solutions, at a price of $7.90 per share in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $2.7 billion. The terms of the transaction have been approved by the HP and 3Com boards of directors.

This combination will transform the networking industry and underscore HP’s next-generation data center strategy built on the convergence of servers, storage, networking, management, facilities and services. The resulting business outcome will help customers simplify the network, deploy a unique and innovative edge-to-core network fabric for the enterprise and improve IT service delivery capabilities, all delivered with best-in-class price-performance.

“Companies are looking for ways to break free from the business limitations imposed by a networking paradigm that has been dominated by a single vendor,” said Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers and Networking, HP. “By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry. By combining HP ProCurve offerings with 3Com’s extensive set of solutions, we will enable customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center.”

“Our extensive product line and innovative technology together with HP’s breadth and scale will expand our global opportunity,” said Bob Mao, chief executive officer, 3Com. “3Com’s networking products are based on a modern architecture which has been designed to offer better performance, require less power and eliminate administrative complexity when compared against current network offerings. Our products are enterprise proven and widely deployed in the world’s largest banks, manufacturers, Internet service providers, public utilities and retailers.”

The acquisition of 3Com will dramatically expand HP’s Ethernet switching offerings, add routing solutions and significantly strengthen the company’s position in China – one of the world’s fastest-growing markets – via the H3C offerings. In addition, the combination will add a large and talented research and development team in China that will drive the acceleration of innovations to HP’s networking solutions.

3Com also brings to HP best-of-breed network security capabilities through its TippingPoint portfolio. For the past four years, TippingPoint has been the leader in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant” in its evaluation of leading network security products. Approximately 30 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies have already deployed TippingPoint intrusion prevention systems.

“We are confident that we can run our entire global business of 300,000-plus employees, including our next-generation data centers, entirely on the new HP networking solutions,” said Randy Mott, executive vice president and chief information officer, HP. “Based on our experience and extensive testing of 3Com’s products, we are planning to undertake a global rollout within HP as soon as possible after the completion of the acquisition.”

Under the terms of the merger agreement, 3Com stockholders will receive $7.90 for each share of 3Com common stock that they hold at the closing of the merger. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of domestic and foreign regulatory approvals and the approval of 3Com’s stockholders. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of calendar 2010.

HP anticipates that the transaction will be slightly dilutive to fiscal 2010 non-GAAP earnings.

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Microsoft Disputes Firefox One Billion Downloads Claim

Two weeks ago, Mozilla announced a major milestone for its Firefox web browser: one billion downloads. They even launched OneBillionPlusYou.com to mark the occasion and demonstrate just how large one billion really is.

Not everyone’s in awe of the number, though. A senior executive of Microsoft, the current browser market leader, has made statements today that essentially question the validity of the one billion downloads milestone. Oh, and she talked about how IE6 cannot die as well.

According to The Guardian, Internet Explorer General Manager Amy Barzdukas asked people to be skeptical of “large number claims” and called the Firefox number “interesting math.” Here’s some of what she said:

As with any marketing statement, I’d encourage people to be somewhat sceptical about large number claims. It’s an interesting number and I have not seen the math [but] how many internet connected users are there? 1.1 billion, 1.5 billion, something in that area.

Of course, these comments come as Firefox continues to chip away Microsoft;s browser market share. While Internet Explorer is still the dominant browser, nearly 1/4 of the world’s computers now run the Firefox open-source browser. Perhaps there’s a little browser envy laced into her comments?

Ms. Barzdukas also reiterated a statement from the company earlier this week that it won't cut off support for IE6 anytime soon, as well as explaining why she thinks IE6 is still used by so many:

The reason that a consumer would still be on IE6 at this point is a lack of awareness or the ‘good enough’ problem,” she said. “If you’re satisfied with what you’re doing and you’re not particularly curious about new technology and don’t really care, upgrading sounds like a hassle. Part of our communication needs to be making clear that there are significant advantages to upgrading to a modern browser.

We still want IE6 to die, but her position is understandable and consistent with what we’ve heard from Microsoft. Maybe it’s that they’re scared people will switch from IE6 to Firefox instead of to IE8, or maybe they just don’t want the complaints that would come with cutting off support. Regardless, we’ll leave Mozilla and Microsoft to quarrel over the numbers.  

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China shuts down domestic social media

According to sources in Beijing and Shanghai, sites such as Twitter and Facebook have been inaccessible since early July following the mass outbreak of riots in Xinjiang province. But last week, reports surfaced that Chinese microblogging sites such as Fanfou, Digu and Jiwai have also shut down.

“This is the first time there has been a consistent order that censors both Western and Chinese sites,” one Shanghai-based digital analyst said, adding that the cause of the shut downs is unknown.

“Usually you see shut-downs occurring during times surrounding politically sensitive dates, but I don’t think there is any specific event coming up. The last time we really saw this was the time leading up to the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square riots, but that affected access to Western social media websites,” said the source. “This may be part of a larger general movement to clean up content and the Chinese internet.”

“It’s happened to video-sharing sites in China in the past but it really is unusual for domestic sites to be temporary shut down,” added a Beijing source, further pointing out that censored Western sites are “blocked” while mainland sites are “temporarily shut down” and often display maintenance messages when users try to access their URLs.

Sources add that access to microblogging sites including Zuosa and Tencent's Taotao has not been restricted. Video-sharing sites such as Youku and Tudou are not thought to be affected.

Despite the censorship efforts, Chinese netizens have discovered alternative methods of accessing sites such as Twitter. “There are always alternative avenues to be found to access these sites. As soon as someone puts a wall or barricade around them, there’s always a way around it,” said Tim Haynes, general manager of Starcom IP China. “There are a bunch of smart people in China who can do that.”

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Artisteer 2.0 + Crack [ The Automated Web Designer ]

Artisteer is the first and only Web design automation product that instantly creates fantastic looking, unique website templates and blog themes.

Top 10 reasons to use Artisteer

1. Generate cool Web design ideas.
2. Adjust generated designs to create great looking Web and Blog templates.
3. Create perfectly correct, validated HTML and CSS that conform to Web standards.
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5. If you are a Web designer, generate ideas, prototypes and quick Websites for your clients and friends.
6. Choose and use many included design elements, from backgrounds to photo objects and buttons.
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9. Save money on Wordpress Themes and Web design templates.
10. If you don't have the time, hire your kids to create great looking Website for you.

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Using The Crack

First of all install Artisteer 2.0 then copy and paste the "Artisteerlauncher.exe"  where Artisteer 2.0 is installed.
And every time you open the artisteer open it using artisteerlauncher. Be carefull that donot open *.artx files by clicking it, open it through artisteerlauncher.

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Researchers Design Paper Thin Speakers

A Taiwanese based research group has developed a speaker technology that can be worked into paper allowing for ultra thin devices, or even talking posters. "A lot of companies are interested in this product," said Chen Ming-daw, a research director at ITRI. "We don't have enough people to handle all the attention right now."

The new technology is being called Flexspeaker because in addition to being paper thin, it can also be rolled up or folded. Right now the goal for minimum sheet size is around 23.6” by 17.3”, and would cost roughly $20 USD each. Unfortunately this is too large to be used in our magazine, but that doesn't stop us from dreaming of the day when our pages can sing “Still Subscribe” to our beloved readers.

According to the researchers, the paper is made by sandwiching thin electrodes that receive audio signals and a pre-polarized diaphragm into the paper structure. Right now an adapter is required between the sound source and the paper, but plans are in the works to allow any stereo source to connect directly to the paper or even wirelessly over bluetooth. The primary limitation of the speakers at this point, is that they have problems with sounds below 500hz. This means that the heavenly baritones of our very own Nathan Edwards would need to be augmented by adding a subwoofer.

Where can you see this technology being used?

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