China Mobile has launched its own IM service, Fetion. It offers PC and mobile phone messaging at zero charge, even from mobiles, with just the GPRS data charges being paid for. Users will be able to IM between mobiles running the service; PC to PC and PC to mobile. Currently there’s no monthly charge, although they haven’t ruled out of possibility of it.
Author: Simon Perry
China Wants To ‘Building A Web Culture With Chinese Characteristics’
China has a self-declared battle against porn going on at the moment and on the back of that Liu Yunshan, head of the Communist Party of China Central Committee’s Publicity Department – a big cheese – has put forward the idea of “building a Web culture with Chinese characteristics.”
Continue reading China Wants To ‘Building A Web Culture With Chinese Characteristics’
MacBook Pro Upgraded: Claimed 50% Faster
Following on from the recent upgrades to the MacBook, Apple has upgraded their Pro laptop range to run the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors, otherwise known as Santa Rosa, at 2.4GHz.
Apple are claiming that it will run apps like Final Cut Pro 6 and Logic Pro 7, 50% faster that the original MacBook Pro with Core Duo – something that will be very tempting to many. With the internal graphics card now upgraded to the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT, the graphics will also display 50% speed faster.
Continue reading MacBook Pro Upgraded: Claimed 50% Faster
China Tackles Internet Porn
The month of May saw a month-long crackdown on Internet porn in China. The combined forces of 10 ministries lead the closing of 300 domestic porn and ‘salacious’ sites being closed down.
Li Baozhong, head of the official press watchdog and deputy director of the national anti-porn and anti-piracy office also reported that they’d blocked 4,000 links to porn sites and filtered out more than 10,000 ‘online porn games’ – we’ve no idea what these porn games could be.
200m DSL Customers Worldwide: China Broadband Numbers Huge
The DSL Forum today announced that the total number of DSL connections worldwide has exceeded 200 million at the World Broadband Forum in Beijing.
It’s estimated that this significant milestone was passed in April this year (2007), less than a year since the announcement of the passing of the 150m level.
Continue reading 200m DSL Customers Worldwide: China Broadband Numbers Huge
Alan Johnston Video Online
Much relief for the relatives and friends of BBC Journalist Alan Johnson as a video of him speaking, apparently in good health, has appeared on the Internet.
Many sites are now carrying it, like the BBC itself and The Telegraph, but in typical media fashion they have chosen to edit the video. We’ve embedding the video below.
First BBC Show Broadcasting In Second Life Tonight
Tonight sees the first BBC TV programme broadcast in Second Life – The Money Programme.
Not surprisingly, the subject will be virtual worlds with two sections being covered – free to enter worlds like Second Life and pay for services, or Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMORPG), like World of Warcraft.
Continue reading First BBC Show Broadcasting In Second Life Tonight
Last.fm Sells For £140m To CBS
UK music service last.fm has been sold to US media giant CBS, whose empire covers TV, radio and Web.
Last.fm is the darling of the ‘new’ Internet kids, as it is based on buzzword-tastic technology. While that’s true, it doesn’t take away from the fact that it is really rather good, using the listen preferences of everyone else on the service to automatically pick the tracks that probably match the music that you like.
Its major strength is that it throws in tracks that you may well have never found under your own volition – vital in a world where personal playlists can kill variety.
At £140m ($280m) the BBC are calling it the “largest-ever UK Web 2.0 acquisition.” Quite how that’s defined is anyone guess, but it is a lot of lolly, so trebles all round.
One of the founders, Martin Stiksel told the BBC that “this move will really support us to get every track ever recorded and every music video ever made onto Last.fm,” quite an ambition, but as he added, “with a strong partner like CBS, this is now within our reach.”
It’s planned that the site and company will continue to operate separately under it’s own branding.
Stiksel also bigged up the UK’s capital city, by saying “being in London has helped us; it’s the best place to do things with music full stop. It’s the place that leads the world.” Hurrah!
(Via)
Basilisk II PSP: Running PSP Mac 7.5 OS: Video
We know you love it when people port software on to unlikely platforms, so thought you’d like to see this video of the old (pre-osx) Mac operating system running on an Sony PSP.
How real it is, isn’t 100% clear, but it appears to be running a PSP version of Basilisk II, an open-source Macintosh Emulator project, called, unsurprisingly, Basilisk II PSP.
(Video follows) Continue reading Basilisk II PSP: Running PSP Mac 7.5 OS: Video
Play YouTube Videos Within Google Search Results
The integration between YouTube and Google is becoming ever-stronger.
We were doing a bit of research on Google today and noticed that they’ve now included the ability to actually watch the videos that are coming up as search results, _within_ the Google search results.
Continue reading Play YouTube Videos Within Google Search Results