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China web users top 500 million: Xinhua
by Staff Writers
Beijing (AFP) Sept 29, 2011

China's online population -- the largest in the world -- has topped half a billion, the state Xinhua news agency reported Thursday, citing a senior official.

Wang Chen, chief of the information office of China's State Council, or cabinet, said more than 15 million people had gone online since the last official figures were released in July.

The growing strength and influence of the web population has fuelled concern in Beijing about the Internet's potential as a tool for generating social unrest, and authorities have stepped up surveillance in recent years.

The government blocks web content that it deems politically sensitive in a vast system dubbed the "Great Firewall of China".

But it has struggled to control the increasingly popular weibos, or microblogs -- sites similar to Twitter that provide a new avenue for mass expression in a tightly controlled information landscape.

Speaking at an industry roundtable, Wang said China now had more 300 million microbloggers, while the number of rural rural Internet users had reached 130 million.

Google to build Asia data centres as market surges
Hong Kong (AFP) Sept 28, 2011 - Google said Wednesday it will build three data centres in Asia at a cost of more than $200 million, as the number of Internet users in the region soars along with stiff competition from rivals.

Google plans to build the new centres in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong on a total of 22.6 hectares (56 acres) of land, the firm said. It currently owns and operates data centres in the US and Europe, but none in Asia.

The centres usually house computer and telecom systems with high security and backup power supplies and will improve the firm's service to customers in the region, it said.

"The number of users and the amount of Internet use in Asia is growing faster than anywhere else in the world," Taj Meadows, Google's Asia-Pacific policy communications manager, told AFP.

"A large number of users are coming online every day."

The search engine giant has faced stiff competition in Asia, particularly in the China market where domestic search services, including Baidu, are household names to a 485 million-strong internet population -- the world's largest.

A study released by the Economist Intelligence Unit on Tuesday said Asian economies are closing the gap on the West in terms of their IT competitiveness, as they strengthen copyright protection and implement regulatory reforms.

The study said the US retained its position as the world's most competitive IT industry, but seven Asian economies made it to the top 20, including Singapore, which ranked third overall, as well as Australia, Taiwan and Japan.

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Yahoo! stays on course after CEO ouster
San Francisco (AFP) Sept 28, 2011 - Yahoo! on Wednesday argued that the ouster of its chief executive has not knocked it off course, and that it was building on its strategy of making offerings more social and mobile.

"We are heads down; we know exactly what we want to do," Yahoo! vice president of applications and mobile Steve Douty said during a briefing with reporters at the California company's office in San Francisco.

"Is there some amount of uncertainty? Sure," he continued. "But we have been really successful at focusing on products that are going to move the needle for us and there is no reason to change them."

Yahoo!'s board of directors fired chief executive Carol Bartz on September 6 less than three years after she was brought in to help turn around the struggling Internet company.

A new chief executive has yet to be selected by the Yahoo! board, which Bartz has derided as "doofuses" who handled her departure poorly.

Yahoo! on Wednesday showed off its first Flickr application for mobile gadgets powered by Google-backed Android software and enhancements to the popular photo sharing and storage service.

A Photo Session feature lets Flickr users in different places flip through an online photo album using iPhones, iPads, or desktop computers as though they were sitting together looking at the images with friends.

Flickr was capitalizing on location-sensing capabilities in smartphones to tag images and creating chat forums to let people discuss pictures in text-message exchanges.

"Mobile and social are really infusing everything we do," said Yahoo! senior director of product management Jonathan Katzman.





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Phone service finally penetrates New York Subway
New York (AFP) Sept 27, 2011
New York's antiquated subway system finally entered the cell phone age Tuesday, but the surprise sight of signal bars popping up on screens didn't please all the Big Apple's harried commuters. Years after other major world cities and even US rivals like Boston or San Francisco began enabling phone use underground, New York's estimated 4.3 million daily straphangers can now make calls. Or at ... read more


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