Access blocked to Chinese users.

The Chinese government has a history of blocking websites that are deemed sensitive but is iTunes a hotbed of anti-Chinese propaganda?

The reason behind the Chinese decision was the availability of a pro-Tibet album which has become a hit on the online music store.

Over the past week, many Chinese users have been unable to access iTunes although Apple’s Beijing-based spokeswoman Huang Yuna said she did not know why music fans were unable to log on.

“We’ve noticed the problem. It’s true that users may fail to log in to iTunes store right now,” she told AFP.

Investigations are still ongoing.

The restrictions started after a pro-Tibet album, “Songs for Tibet”, was launched on iTunes on August 8. The album soon become a hugely popular download all around. It seems the albums review page became the epicentre of a huge pie slinging contest between pro-Tibet web users and Chinese nationalists. The page registered over 400 posts before it was eventually taken down by Apple. Amongst the less complimentary comments was this blinder: “The Tibetan culture has been massacred by the oppressive Chinese government.” Rumours suggest that the review page comments were the reason the site was blocked in China.

Historical note: China has ruled Tibet since 1951, a year after sending troops in to “liberate” it - I’m not entirely sure what they needed to liberated from. Facist Yetis, maybe?

Popularity: 10% [?]

…defying scarey economic predictions

Recently, Mervyn King, the head of the Bank of England, pretty much said “we’re stuffed” ! Ok, those aren’t his exact words but over the next few years we should all expect some pretty hard times.

So it would seem that we’re going to slow down on buying, business will dry up, unemployment will rise… It may well happen but I don’t think many consumers (that’s you and me) are listening according to a report released by IMRG and Crapgemini. The figures show UK internet sales reached £4.8bn in July - that’s a massive 11.3 per cent rise  over June. This figure is equivalent to £79 spent for every person in the UK.

‘Hooray, the economy is going to be fine’ - not exactly! Online spending went up, high street sale went down by 0.9%. So, do we finally trust technology to help do our shopping or are we just lazy? Look at is this way, why go to town when you have it delivered?

The largest sales increases were seen in clothing, footwear and accessories, which rose by 22.8 per cent. Call me a sceptic, but a lot of this could be parents getting ready for their kids going back to school!

Popularity: 13% [?]

New Domains cause headaches

Enterprise web filtering specialist, Bloxx, has welcomed the the announcement by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to extend the currently available top level domains. The move should, alongside longer IP addresses available under IPv6, protect the Internet for all perceived domain name and world population growth rates.

From January next year, anyone can then apply for one of these new, inexhaustible domain names which will be made available by opening up top level domain possibilities (rather than the currently acceptable .uk, .fr, .de etc).

In addition, the widespread adoption of IPv6 lengthens the available IP addresses, which at the current rate would expire in 2010. With IPv4 there were potentially 4.2 billion IP addresses available for use. By moving to IPv6 this figure has increased this to 340 trillion, trillion, trillion - that’s a lot of domains.

“The recommendations from ICANN will future proof the Internet so that it can be used and enjoyed for many generations to come,” says Bloxx Managing Director, Eamonn Doyle. “However, we predict a land grab for these additional top level domains which will see a dramatic increase in the number of registered domains and URLs. This will be a significant
challenge for first and second-generation web filtering suppliers whose products depend on keeping a URL database up-to-date.”

“The problem with first and second generation web filters is with the growth and turnover of the web, as soon as a URL database or “blacklist” is updated, it is out of date - these new recommendations mean this problem has never been more relevant,” explains Doyle. “Third-generation filters, such as Bloxx Tru-View Technology, analyse and categorise sites on the fly and make an informed decision as to what risks are associated with accessing them, and are now clearly the only viable way to manage user access to the web.”

So, expect to see a slew of new products on the market as vendors seek to keep up with the implementation of IPv6.

The opening up of the TLD’s also represents huge potential for anyone interested in domaining - fingers and credit cards at the ready!

Popularity: 43% [?]

Whole lot of browser love going on.

Yes, Firefox 3 has has notched up a staggering download figure in its first week of availability. What is even more impressive is the figure for the first 24 hours - 8 million downloads.

Reports show that the US took the lead with 5.48 million downloads with Germany coming in second at 1.7 million. The UK managed a healthy 807,900 copies of Firefox downloaded. Hey, we’re only little!

Mozilla have been urging users to download en masse in order to set a world record for the number of software downloads. The campaign by Mozilla was so successful that is almost knocked out their servers!

Browser market share for Mozilla now stands at 19.17%, up from 18.41%.

Does Microsoft have an answer to Firefox? We’ll have to wait for the next release of IE.

Popularity: 44% [?]

Chasing LinkedIn.

Yes, you heard it right. Facebook has announced that they will be focusing on professional networking services in the future. Interestingly, this announcement comes shortly after LinkedIn was valued at $1 billion.

LinkedIn currently has around 23 million users. Facebook would no doubt to like to encourage many professionals to use its own service offerings.

The announcement is not quite as clear cut as it first seem. Facebook relies heavily on adevertising to generate revenue whilst LinkedIN provides more focus on allowing individuals to build up their careers through online networking. Advertising is only a small part of LinkedIn’s revenue stream with the majority of money coming from online recruiting agencies, premium subscriptions and HR departments.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Ooops!

It must be said that most mass software deployments never run without a hitch. It seems that Firefox is no exception.

Within five hours of release, a critical flaw was found in Firefox 3 according to Tipping Point’s Zero Day Initiative. Tipping Point’s DVLabs identified an issue which was immediately report to Mozilla.

The flaw is believed to allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code although no specifi have been announce.

Mozilla is believed to be working on a patch to plug the hole, which, interestingly, also applies to Firefox 2.

Popularity: 32% [?]

But Mozilla’s bandwidth took a battering.

It’s here at last. Firefox 3 was made available for download at 10 a.m Pacific time yesterday (that’s 6 p.m to us in the UK). Mozilla had urged users to download enmasse in order to set a world record for software download but this didn’t go without a hitch.

At peak, Mozilla was server around 14,000 downloads per minute which chewed up 13 Gb of bandwidth every second. HTTP traffic accounted for another 2Gb per second. Obviously, there were knock on effects. Downloads slowed to as little as 5Kb per second - hmm, dialup modem speeds!  Paul Kim, vice president of product marketing, said “Our systems were quite busy earlier this morning…” - really?

Estimates suggest that Firefox 3 was downloaded about 5 to 7 million times at the end of the first day.

Popularity: 28% [?]

Next version in the pipeline.

There’s no stopping Mozilla. Only recently we announced the launch of Firefox 3 but it would appear that the next release is being prepared.

A report from arstechnica suggests that version 3.1 of the Open Source browser could be in the wild by July.

Significant feature enhancements to version 3.1 include: tab previews, tag auto-completion and the addition of several new features to Firefox’s Gecko rendering engine such as the HTML 5 video element and CSS text shadows.

I wonder how many of these features we’ll see in future versions of Internet Explorer.

Popularity: 56% [?]

Worried?

According to a report by the University of Washington the number of bloggers arrested since 2003 has been growing. Figures show that that 10 bloggers were arrested in 2006 rising to 36 in 2007.

Should you be worried? Not unless you’re doing writing subversive comments (or the government just doesn’t like you!)

Admittedly, the bloggers most likely to face imprisonment come from countries such as the Middle East, Far East, Egypt, China and Iran with the most arrests coming during election periods and times of civil unrest.

Figures show detention periods ranging from a few days to 8 years!

All together now “We love our government!”

Popularity: 23% [?]

…Security.

Hmm, does the word security make any particular subject jump to mind? Government security, maybe? Anyway, enough swipes. It looks like security in the IT  is still a major concern with 97% of companies ranking this area as ‘high’ and ‘very high’.

The rapid growth of mission critical applications and data  reliance has pushed security to the front of the queue.

Other factors of significant concern for industry are environmental issues, compliance and global standardisation.

Popularity: 23% [?]