Google's China Move: What Does it Mean?

Google has just announced that it will stop censoring search results in China and will instead redirect mainland Chinese web visitors to an uncensored version of the site based in Hong Kong. China may block access to the Hong Kong site as its next move.

In announcing its decision to stop censoring search results, Google didn't argue that censorship was intolerable, but said that the situation was getting worse: a wave of hacking attacks against companies including Google, evidence that the Gmail accounts of human rights activists had been compromised and the government's shutting off access to YouTube, Blogger, Twitter and Facebook. What comes next?

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Committee to Protect Journalists: "We welcome this stand against censorship and hope that all Internet companies operating in China take a similar principled position... In the long run, however, we hope that it ramps up pressure on the Chinese government to allow its citizens to access the news and information they need to be informed and engaged citizens."

One future scenario that could unfold is that China could block access for its citizens to the Google Hong Kong site and Google could call on the US government for assistance. The US government may or may not be interested in intervening.

Google might also determine that it did the best it could: that its hands are now clean, that Chinese citizens who wanted to could access the Hong Kong site by proxy and that there is probably limited interest in Google inside China anyway.

Finally, Google could make this move in anticipation of political pressure to do something about censorship around the world. Senate Democrats have said they will soon introduce proposed legislation that will "require Internet companies to take reasonable steps to protect human rights, or face civil and criminal liability."

Different companies are liable to have different reactions to such political pressure. Facebook told a Senate committee it is still too small to decide how to deal with international questions of censorship yet!

Google may well have made this latest move in order to spare itself from an impending wave of political pressure later.

Or maybe Google just did the morally right thing to do today. It's hard to consider that the most likely explanation though when it wasn't the censorship that was the last straw, it was the hacking attacks, the Gmail break-ins and the lack of access to a variety of sites.

What do you think this means? What do you think will happen next? Stay tuned for what's sure to be an interesting, unfolding story.

See Also: Don't Assume China Mimics US-Style Social Media

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Flinc: Become an Internet-Enabled Leather Tramp

It used to be you might need a huge thumb, like Sissy Hankshaw, to be a master of the roadways. Then, along came Craigslist's rideshare board, making it even easier to get around the world sans car.

Today, Flinc has debuted at the DEMO conference in hopes of forever changing the lives of leather tramps and hitchhikers, or even the car-less simply looking for a lift, worldwide.

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Flinc is following in the footsteps of another ride-share app for the iPhone that debuted at DEMO in 2008, Avego. Flinc has one major difference - it will be "the first dynamic ridesharing service that connects Internet-enabled navigation systems with smartphones", according to a tweet by the company this morning.

Flinc acts as a go-between, matching potential riders with drivers by offering riders with a list of available drivers, including the price and profile for each ride. When a rider picks a driver, the driver can see on the navigation system how far out of their way they would need to go and has the option to refuse or accept the ride request. Any cost for the ride is taken care of by the app.

According to the company, "flinc is a dynamic ridesharing service that can be used on smart phones or online, combining GPS and location based capabilities with social networking to offer a dynamic and automated method of transport."

The only problem we see, of course, is that a service like this needs to become ubiquitous before it is even slightly useful, so it requires a leap of faith on its users' ends. Avego, which came out in 2008, says today that it has more than 7,000 "empty seats" worldwide, with 165 in Texas and 75 in Austin. But could we find a ride across town? Not really. Either way, the idea of real-time ride-sharing apps is one we love, both for its greenness and its inherent utility.

What we really love about this is that it doesn't (from what little we've seen on the website) have anything to do with badges or virtual items or "checking in", like we've seen so much with so many location-based services lately. Flinc and Avego both deal with location in its most basic sense: you are in Austin, someone else is in Austin, you both want to go to Arizona, let's make it happen.

Currently, the project is in initial testing stages and has yet to launch. To this end, it is asking where to go to market first, allowing potential users to suggest its launch location.

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Can You Hear Me Now? Check This Crowd-Sourced Mobile Coverage Map

Have you ever found yourself wondering why your friend hasn't called - even though they promised - only to realize you've been sitting in the cellular equivalent of the Dead Sea for the past hour and a half? Sometimes, it just happens that the spot you decided to wait out an important call had no coverage and now, you could know that beforehand. Even better, you can look at your city's coverage before you even choose a wireless service in the first place.

Root Wireless today released its Root Mobile crowd-sourcing app for Blackberry and Android phones, which pulls data from phones and aggregates it into a street-level coverage map.

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According to the company, the app is "a free beta application utilizing smartphones as network monitoring devices" to help people choose which cell provider to go with. Currently, the mash-up map, which is offered on CNET, provides information on 17 different areas for AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.

From the company on the specifics on the network testing:

Root Mobile conducts tests that measure signal strength, data transmission speeds, network connection failures and other performance indicators. It is noteworthy that these tests differ from data transmission speed tests conducted by others using PCs, precisely because Root Mobile is engineered to determine real-world network performance as experienced by people using smartphones - findings that for the first time objectively measure and map true, real-world performance from the perspective of the smartphone consumer. Users can choose to run a network test when they want. The application otherwise runs unnoticed in the background.

Apps for Blackberry and Android phones are already available with one for Windows Mobile phones on the way before the end of the second quarter. An iPhone app is said to be in development.

We have to wonder if differences between handsets and reception have been taken into account or have we moved beyond that? The map lets us choose between what type of reported info we would like to see, whether "Signal", "Data" or "Network", but there is no device category. We can also see the number of zones reporting "No Bars", "Access Failure" and "Hot Zones" (such as dropped calls), but no information on how many people have reported these issues. With a crowd sourced app and mash-up like this, we'd love to know if the problem is widespread or if, in reality, there's been one person who's been there and not gotten any reception. Maybe they've dropped their phone one too many times? We don't know.

Either way, it looks like a neat idea that we think we would like to compare with those carrier-provided coverage maps. Let's see if your map gets in the way of the game now, Verizon.

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Opera's Widgets Become Mobile Apps

Opera Software, developers of web browser technology for PC, Mac, Linux and mobile, have just announced that their Opera "widgets" will now work on nearly any mobile phone. The widgets in question are small mini-applications that can run in Opera's web browser itself, on the desktop as standalone apps and now, as standalone apps on mobile phones, too.

Built with standards like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, the widgets are easy for web developers to create since they don't require knowing a vendor-specific technology in order to do so.

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According to the company's announcement, the new widgets take advantage of Opera's recently launched cross-platform UI framework, a framework that's intended to "help operators and manufacturers efficiently distribute a single browser UI across a wide range of devices."

That change to browser distribution technology now applies to the Opera Widgets too. Already, there are hundreds of widgets available in Opera's online gallery, including everything from games to media players plus widgets for accessing Facebook, Twitter and more. 

However, it appears that these widgets for mobile aren't being offered directly to consumers in the way that the company's web browser widgets are. Instead, Opera intends to provide their widget lineup to operators and handset manufacturers who can then choose which widgets they want to include with their phones. Interested businesses are asked to request more info here: http://ping.fm/a1kyP.

In other words, just because these widgets are built with "open web standards," it doesn't mean you can just start installing them on your iPhone right now.

Widgets: Apps for Feature Phones?

That's OK, though - the company probably doesn't intend for that to happen anyway. The Opera mobile browsers have become popular alternatives to the basic browsers included on many of today's "feature phones" because they speed up browsing by proxying access to the web through Opera's servers while also offering some advanced options like pinch-and-zoom and tabbed browsing. For feature phones, the Opera browser can offer a better web surfing experience, but on today's smartphones, the built-in browser is usually just as good (if not better) and doesn't have to rely on proxies for fast web access.

Similarly, the new mobile widgets are likely intended to be the speedy apps missing from most feature phones - phones which, unlike the iPhone and Android devices, don't have their own built-in "App Stores." By providing carriers and manufacturers access to the Opera widget lineup, now even the most basic phones can tout some of the same features that modern smartphones do ("access Facebook with an app!," "update Twitter on the go!"). Whether or not any businesses go for these new widgets still remains to be seen.

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