China Internet Use Soars

by Taylor Flatt on January 14th, 2009 at 8:54 pm EDT - 307 views

While China imposes strict regulations on their internet and in some cases jailing writers and web developers, they continue moving up the ladder. Ever since 2001 when it began catching the attention of the internet world, they have been under the Global Watch.

China has now reached almost 300 million internet users in 2008 and has doubled since 2006. Unlike the US, 90% of Chinese users are using broadband to access the internet.

With over 560 million mobile subscribers, BDA (Chinese Marketing and Researching Firm) still stated the e-commerce and content is the better quality in the US. This isn’t surprising since a lot of businesses and entrepreneurs begin in the US and China is still relatively new to the “market”.

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Baidu Sorry for Pornography

by Taylor Flatt on January 6th, 2009 at 10:57 pm EDT - 432 views

Earlier this week, China announced that it was taking action against the main search websites including Google and Baidu. Baidu has apologized for the published pornography on their website. They have announced they are taking measures to prevent such things from happening in the future while attempting to rid themselves of it in the present.

However, Google has yet to release an official statement on the matter. But has been reporting saying they are attempting to clean up their act by removing obscene content from their site.

I believe that China has the right attitude in matter, although, I do believe it is wrong to remove such things. The whole theory behind engines such as Google and Baidu is for indexing websites where you can find relevant information on the topic you are searching for. I am not saying these things should be advertised openly, however, they should not be excluded from such searches with the attempt of finding such a site.

These sites shouldn’t back down because a country doesn’t like their content. What happens when they or any other country doesn’t like having pictures or information on hurricanes displayed because it kills many people every year? Although not very practical, it is however theoretically possible since these sites are backing down quite readily.

Source: AP   
Image courtesy of noticastech 

China Restricts Internet Further

by Taylor Flatt on January 5th, 2009 at 8:27 pm EDT - 344 views

China, since last month, has gone another step further and has begun accusing sites like Google for displaying morally controversial items such as pornography and vulgar content. China departments claim they alert Google of their overabundant links to said sites, but have reported Google has implemented no countermeasures. China now threatens, “For those Web sites that repeatedly ignore warnings, we will publicize a few, punish a few and even close down a few”.

China is justifying their action by eluding that the populous is calling for action, “The vulgar trend has deeply harmed the mental and physical health of the young generation. Many parents are calling out: ‘Save our children’. They want the government to take drastic action.”

This looks like this trend will only continue on a downward spiral. With BBC being blocked along with NYTimes website, this will only get worse as the censorship issue is clouded by the cry of “help” by the people. Although there are bad things on the internet, it is like life; you cannot censor everything out and expect to live in a clean just world. Censorship is a long debated argument that has been and always will be a central issue. If China persists on their course of cutting the internet down, where will it stop?

Source: FT, UPI
Image courtesy of gallery.hd

Are the Big 3 Too..Big?

by Taylor Flatt on December 23rd, 2008 at 9:34 pm EDT - 344 views

When I refer to “The Big 3″ I don’t mean those of WWII, but those of modern day technology.  Of course, I am sure you can already guess which ones I am referring to but for information’s sake I will list them nonetheless.

1. Microsoft
2. GOOGLE
3. Yahoo!

Now, folks, I don’t wanna sound like a hippie or constantly paranoid, but it seems to me that the Big 3 are just getting too big and powerful.  I mean, just look at the track record of these companies and where they have their hands.

For one, Microsoft makes everything that is awesome + electronic but they also have the some of the biggest server sites in the world, make hundreds of programs and is a household name that can be considered the “jumpstart of the Internet age”.

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