The Tiananmen Square Massacre occurred on June 4th, 1989, and it appears that the Chinese government is going to mark the 20th anniversary in its own special way. Within the country, access to just about every major social media site has been blocked.
YouTube UK Blocks All Premium Music Videos
In the minds of some overdramatic and/or young people in the UK, it might be today, and not February 3rd, 1959, that deserves the title of "the day the music died." That’s because YouTube UK has taken the drastic step of blocking many music videos.
Iran Blocks Millions Of Web Sites
The Iranian government is currently blocking in excess of five million Web sites for hosting content that it deems as unethical and anti-Islamic.During a conference in Iran, the Prosecutor General Abdolsamad Khoram Abadi said most of the sites were blocked because they "contained unethical content" such as pornography and anti-Islamic sentiment.
Google Blocks Services in Some Countries
Google is reportedly blocking use of it’s Chrome browser (among other applications like Google Talk and Gmail Notifier) in some countries with which the United States has economic sanctions and export controls with. "We are unable to permit the download of Google Chrome in Cuba, Syria, North Korea, Iran, and Sudan," says a Google Spokesperson.
Hamas Blocks Pornographic Sites In The Gaza Strip
Hamas has ordered Palestinian telecoms to cut off access to pornographic Web sites in the Gaza Strip, a Hamas government official said.Telecommunications firm Paltel has agreed to restrict Internet users access to adult Web sites, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Communications. "The aim of the move is to protect the Palestinian community from cultural pollution and to protect the young generations from the misuse of the Internet through viewing pornographic sites," Hamas government spokesman Taher al-Nono said.
Building Blocks Of The Social Web
In a brilliant post on nform.ca, information architect Gene Smith of the Atomiq.org blog outlined the 7 building blocks of social software. This pulls together the work of various people including Matt Webb and Stewart Butterfield and provides a framework that I think is valuable in thinking about social software.
India Blocks Access Major Blog Sites
The Indian government was accused of censorship after the Department of Telecommunications was found to have given directives to regional Internet service providers to block access to blogspot.com, typepad.com and geocities.
Microsoft Server 2003 Tool Blocks Update
Similar to an offering for Windows XP, a new tool will better allow administrators time to plan upgrades.
More Adsense Blocks
Google has recently made some changes in their Adsense program, and webmasters, busy as they are, may not be aware of all the Adsense news. For those who don’t know, Adsense is the Pay-per-click (PPC) revenue sharing program offered by Google to webmasters who run primarily content-oriented sites.
Google Blocks RSS News Feeds
Google has filed a cease and desist order to stop RSS news feeds from using Google News as a source for headlines. The motion was filed against a programmer from Britain, named Julian Bond, who created the php script that crawls Google News.