ReadWriteWeb: A Conversation with Ai Weiwei: Social Media and Digital Activism

If you were thinking of getting your iPhone 4 from China to avoid signing onto a two-year contract or being locked into using AT&T as your carrier, you might want to reconsider. According to geopolitical blog Ogle Earth, the new iPhone being sold in China comes with a Maps app, which is powered by Google Maps, that is "hard-wired to Google Maps' censored dataset for China, where the depiction of China's borders complies with the official propaganda of the Chinese government.

What does it take to make a marketing campaign go viral through social media? Proctor & Gamble seems to have figured out the formula given their widely successful Old Spice deodorant campaign featuring Isaiah Mustafa - or have they? I think we are far from any marketer being able to claim that she or he has discovered the science behind viral marketing. However, we can look at successful examples such as Old Spice and others in China's $38.5 billion plus e-commerce market to gain a better understanding of the qualities a successful campaign should embody.

Google isn't the only search engine introducing innovative features today. In an effort to be more accessible to international users, especially those new to computing, Yahoo has made it possible for Chinese users to enter searches with their own handwriting. Visitors to Yahoo! Taiwan and Yahoo! Hong Kong can now use a special handwriting panel to draw out characters in order to conduct a search, making it easier for those unfamiliar with Chinese typing to more easily browse the Web.

A Google Web site that monitors access in China is reporting that Google Web search, which was fully or mostly accessible yesterday in mainland China is being completely blocked. But the company is now saying that service is fine.

The company's stock had slipped nearly 2% in after-hours trading as of 6 p.m. EST.

Xi Guohua, China's vice-minister of industry and information technology, has announced that the MIIT is working toward a national IoT plan. The announcement was made at the recent China IoT Conference in Shanghai.

TCMnet reported the announcement.

"According to Xi, MIIT will fix a clear positioning, development goals, timetable and roadmap of IOT industry... It will strengthen policy supports to IOT, including financial and taxation measures."