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Google Removes Its Help Entry on Censorship, More News — Incredible. Google removed their help entry on censorship, as Gary Price discovered. Here's what it used to read: — "Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated …
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Gates defends China's internet restrictions — Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft, took the rare step of standing up for arch-rival Google today as he argued that state censorship was no reason for technology companies not to do business in China.

Google in China — Google users in China today struggle with a service that, to be blunt, isn't very good. Google.com appears to be down around 10% of the time. Even when users can reach it, the website is slow, and sometimes produces results that when clicked on, stall out the user's browser.

The New Boom … Be careful what you wish for, all of you with the "Please, God, just one more bubble!" bumper stickers. It's getting wild again in Silicon Valley. In recent months, the breathtaking ascent of Google has lit a fire under its competitors, which include practically everyone in the online world.

Auto Ads Veer Off Newspaper Pages, Head to Web — Continued Slide in Revenue — From Classified Advertising — Adds to Publishers' Woes — Auto ads, a major source of newspaper-classified advertising, have been slipping steadily for nearly two years. But the slippage may be turning into a landslide.
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Brin Speaks On China & Looking At What's Filtered — Since the news broke late Tuesday that Google China would be censored, lots of press and blog attention has been published. Here's a brief look at some of it. — Google Blogoscoped's Philipp Lenssen has been doing some very impressive work …

The 5 Problems with Videogame Journalism — In the last year, a lot has been said about videogame journalism and the problems of the field. There is a belief that gaming reviewers play into the hands of the marketing machine instead of being actual critics who can help to improve the quality …
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The Game Chair

Blogger Junkets Rekindle an Old PR Approach — In the pre-Internet era (I know call me a mastodon), press junkets we're huge. Companies would spend oodles of money to fly reporters in for a whirlwind tour of a destination and/or to meet certain high-profile individuals.

Homebrew games and Emulation on PSP 2.50! — Fanjita Releases 2.0 eLoader for v2.00, v2.01 and v2.50 PSP's — PSP Updates forum moderator and hacker guru Fanjita has completed his first release of a new loader for 2.01+ PSP's called eLoader. While 2.60 is not currently supported …

LA sues over 'Grand Theft' game — LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The city of Los Angeles has sued Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. (TTWO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) for selling pornographic video games to children with its best-selling game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," which last year was found to have hidden sex scenes.
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edge cases and early adopters — This week was the fourth version of Microsoft' "search champ" program, and the first one where I've been heavily involved in the planning (rather than simply being an attendee). It was a great meeting, with some amazing people providing input into new product development in MSN/WindowsLive.

Predictions and More Speculation on a Google Music Service — Elinor Mills has a brief post reporting that Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck is predicting that Google will offer a digital music download service in the three to six months. Bear Sterns is using the name the name "Google Tunes" as their "code name" for the service.

How Not To Deal With Blogs: A Case Study — From time to time, I get asked by people at various companies "about blogs and stuff", in particular how companies can best deal with blogs from a PR and marketing perspective. Two things I stress are sincerity and honesty.

Change is good! — We have some great changes in MSN Spaces. — Have a picture that has a great story around it...you can now add a description to your photos. Your viewers can now add comment to photos as well as blogs. So make sure to go to someone's photo album and leave a comment on your favorite photo as well.

The Coming Irrelevance Of My.Yahoo For Me — After reading Fooled By Randomness, I found myself becoming increasingly annoyed by the information on My.Yahoo page. I've had My.Yahoo as my default home page since 1997 or so and probably have it refresh (deliberately or otherwise) …

Rocketboom to Auction Ad Slot on eBay — Journalist Paul Berger's blog, reports that Rocketboom producer Andrew Baron and presenter Amanda Congdon are about to find out how much an ad at the end of a Rocketboom segment is worth. The site gets about 130,000 downloads a day.

Researchers: Rootkits headed for BIOS — Robert Lemos, SecurityFocus 2006-01-26 — ARLINGTON, Virginia — Insider attacks and industrial espionage could become more stealthy by hiding malicious code in the core system functions available in a motherboard's flash memory …
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