Gmail disruption in China could signal tighter control

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14 March 2011
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Chinese Internet users have reported greater difficulty accessing Gmail in recent weeks, prompting speculation that the Chinese government is again stepping up its efforts to control the flow of information on the again stepping up its efforts to control the flow of information on the Web.

Gmail users are complaining on Chinese microblogs that the service has been slow or inaccessible. Google has reported no problems with access in China, but the complaints are ongoing and appear to have started late last month — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Carmack: Direct3D is now better than OpenGL

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14 March 2011
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First person shooter godfather John Carmack has revealed that he now prefers DirectX to OpenGL, saying that inertia is the main reason why id Software has stuck by the cross-platform 3D graphics API for years.

Speaking to bit-tech for a forthcoming Custom PC feature about the future of OpenGL in PC gaming, Carmack said I actually think that Direct3D is a rather better API today. He also added that Microsoft had the courage to continue making significant incompatible changes to improve the API, while OpenGL has been held back by compatibility concerns. Direct3D handles multi-threading better, and newer versions manage state better — via redwolf.newsvine.com

5 Reasons Why the US Domain Seizures Are Unconstitutional

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14 March 2011
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Last week, Bryan McCarthy, the 32-year-old operator of ChannelSurfing.net, was arrested on charges of criminal copyright infringement. This arrest has once again raised questions about the seizure of domains operated by those that are accused, but not convicted, of copyright infringement related crimes. Critics ranging from bloggers to individual rights advocates to Senators have rightfully questioned the constitutionality of these seizures — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Flickr Cites ‘Community Guidelines’ For Censorship of Egyptian Blogger’s Photos

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14 March 2011
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TechCrunch is reporting that Flickr has cited Community Guidelines for censoring an Egyptian blogger’s uploaded photos of Egyptian Secret Police. The photos in question were originally uploaded by Hossam Hamalawy, aka Arabawy to his Flickr account here.

According to Arabawy these photos were taken from State Security Police headquarters in Nasr City which he says “hosted one of Mubarak’s largest torture facilities.” Attention was raised over this deletion yesterday after NPR’s Andy Carvin tweeted out concerns about the removal — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Twitter used to brand products … and deliver a touch of kindness, too

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14 March 2011
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No sooner had English IT worker Emma Button kvetched on Twitter that she had accidentally put ground rice in the sugar pot, she received a reply from a British Interflora branch.

Sorry to hear you’re feeling ill – would some surprise flowers make up for the sugar incident, it read.

Within hours, she had a bouquet delivered to her door, and Interflora had a glowing Twitter testimonial, along with Ms Button’s promise to talk up the company on her Mellow Mummy blog

The florist chain has been sending flowers to British tweeters who complain of feeling unwell or sad for several months now. According to Trendwatching.com’s latest bulletin, it’s part of a new marketing technique — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Internet proves to be a lifeline in Japan disaster

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14 March 2011
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The earthquake and resulting tsunami off the coast of Japan has proved yet again how the internet offers an information lifeline to the world in a time of crisis.

The internet was partly designed so US military communications could withstand nuclear attack, and is proving equally resilient in natural disasters and upheavals in global politics — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Fear Mongering and Delusional Piracy Report Upsets Aussies

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10 March 2011
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A new study commissioned by several entertainment industry outfits made the rounds in the Australian news yesterday. It claims that illicit movie, music and games downloads cost the industry $900 million a year as well as 8,000 jobs and that an increase in broadband adoption could propel the losses to a staggering $5.2 billion in the next five years. However, it looks like the public isn’t buying it, figuratively speaking — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Google trots out Gmail feature to auto-label

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10 March 2011
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Google will start a public test of a new Gmail feature that will automatically label certain types of mass and automated e-mail so that users can more easily recognize and assign proper priority to them.

The idea is to make the Gmail inbox more organized and help users more quickly distinguish these types of messages from other more personal ones that are sent to them exclusively and that may be more important.

The feature is called Smart Labels and needs to be activated from the Labs tab on the Gmail Settings section of the account. When it’s on, Smart Labels creates three labels called Bulk, Forums and Notifications, Google announced on Wednesday — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Australian .com.au domain names hit 2 million

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8 March 2011
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When Lloyd Borrett set up a website in the mid-1990s for a local computer company, he had to move overseas to find a suitable domain name – well before it was fashionable to do so.

The restrictions on Australian domain names meant that he could not reserve expert.com.au for Expert, an IT business later acquired by Indian outsourcer Infosys for $31 million. Similar generic names such as florist.com.au or computer.com.au were not for sale.

Basically, any word in the dictionary was excluded, said Mr Borrett, who now works for anti-virus and security company AVG . So I went to Norfolk Island instead and registered expert.nf because they had just opened up a registry there.

The Australian rules were gradually relaxed and the trade in domain names ending in .au has boomed.

Last night, total registrations on Australia’s country-code top-level domain reached 2 million, indicating that Australian businesses, which make up almost 86 per cent of .au domain names, prefer local internet real estate. Almost a quarter of a million .au domains have been sold this financial year — via redwolf.newsvine.com

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