Internet

AUSTIN, Texas--One of the things I left this capital city after South by Southwest (SXSW) 2007 hoping for was that the conference organizers would do something to solve the problem of the massive amount of wasted materials that end up in attendees' swag bags.

As I noted last year, someone here to attend all three of the SXSW festivals--Interactive, Film and Music--would receive three separate bags containing more than ten pounds of newspapers, magazines, fliers, and so much more.

So when arriving here this year for South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi), I wanted to see how things had changed, if … Read more

Rumors are flying: Tudou, a hugely popular streaming video site based in China, has been instructed to shut down by a Chinese government authority. Tudou is still online as of this writing, but if it goes down, a major haven for streaming television will be gone.

The rumor can be summarized quickly. China's State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) supposedly instructed Tudou to close its doors, and word is it's because the people responsible for taking down illegal material missed some porn.

Anyone who has looked through sites such as SurfTheChannel is probably familiar with Tudou, … Read more

These days, Twitter is a worldwide phenomenon, a household name, and has even spawned a verb, "to Tweet."

But before the second week of March of last year, when thousands of geeks began arriving in Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest Interactive festival (SXSWi), few people had even heard of the nascent microblogging service. Within days, however, Twitter had taken the conference by storm. The story of how Twitter took over SXSWi, and how it spread to the outside world because of the many influential early-adopters in attendance, is well known.

"People see what happened with … Read more

For anyone who follows alternate-reality games (ARGs), it should come as no surprise that the latest entry in the genre, The Lost Ring, is the brainchild of, among others, Jane McGonigal.

Until now, it was only suspected--though with extremely high levels of confidence--that the game, which is centered on helping a fictional amnesiac woman named Ariadne discover her identity, was a promotional vehicle for this summer's Beijing Olympics.

But McGonigal, who is keynoting at the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin on Tuesday, confirmed to me that the game was in fact designed in collaboration with the International … Read more

I was all ready to highlight what seemed like a very insightful comment on this blog by a co-founder of the advertising company CultureFish Media on the merits of Baidu, China's leading search engine. But then I remembered Rick at CNET Asia had asked readers for reasons to love Baidu. Lo and behold, the same comment appeared there under the name of a different CultureFish exec (and prominent blogger).

This wouldn't bother me at all, except that the comment includes personal reflection, such as this passage that appears verbatim in both posts: "Maybe I will get more … Read more

For months now, I've been hearing whispers that a big new alternate-reality game was on the way. I never got any details of what it was about, but when a box arrived at my desk on Friday filled with clues, I knew this was it, and it seems that it's linked to this year's summer Olympics.

If you're not familiar with these types of games, known popularly as ARGs, they tend to be mixed-media affairs that task players the world over with solving puzzles, both individually and working with others, online and in the real world, … Read more

Baidu.com, the top Chinese search engine, gets lots of its traffic from a service that tracks and links to MP3s, most of which are illegally posted. Now a Chinese music industry group is suing the site over alleged copyright violation.

The AP reports:

Music Copyright Society official Qu Jingming said in a statement posted on the society's Web site Friday that Baidu.com provided "music listening, broadcasting and downloading services in various forms on its Web site without approval, and through unfettered piracy, earning huge advertising revenue on its huge number of hits."

The copyright society … Read more

If you can count on geeks for one thing, it's a creative approach to traditional things.

For example, l33tspeak as an alternative to regular language. Or LOLCats as an alternative to the usual annoying pictures of cats.

That's why I wasn't surprised to find, over at Laughing Squid, a post about a site that is now collecting images of geek graffiti.

This, if you're wondering, is a small, but growing, trend in which geeks--or folks taking on geek tendencies--tag some public place with some kind of tech-inspired message.

For example, on the West Bank side of … Read more

The existing bandwidth between Asia and North America is crowded. Following FCC approval of a U.S.-China link last month, Google and five other companies have announced a Japan-U.S. link to be completed in early 2010.

The $300 million fiber-optic cable will stretch approximately 10,000 km (6,214 miles) under the Pacific. "Google's partners in the consortium, dubbed Unity, comprises Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI, Pacnet, and Singapore Telecommunications," Yahoo News reported.

Internet users in East Asia are familiar with sometimes sluggish speeds on transpacific transmissions. In my experience, connections are for some reason … Read more