iTunes is back after being blocked for offering pro-Tibet secession music. What has changed? Apple has made a change without removing the album. This is a smart accommodation, not unlike Google's method of operating in China without sacrificing its global principles, which this writer has defended in the past.

I miss facets of streaming TV. That part of scheduled entertainment will forever be ingrained in my habits. Entertainment on demand does, to an extent, strip the expectation and suspense from the enjoyment on a show.

Danwei.org's annual listing of the best Chinese and English blogs about China is out - and we're more than just a little bit proud that Hao Hao Report made the list!

News article from India explores how darn well covered China is in blogs. Some mention of the recent ChinaBounder scandal...

Here I was eating my dinner and watching TV when an ad came on TV that beautifully meshed in The Mummy 3 with the Beijing Olympics for a TV commercial trailer. Now, regardless of what you may think of The Mummy (1 or 2), from an advertising perspective, that was an amazing mesh of two ads into one TV commercial.

BEIJING -- Yahoo Inc., under fire from civil-rights groups for its indirect role in human rights abuses in China, is answering critics by setting up a fund to give victims of government censorship legal and other assistance.

The webco has been charged with complicity in the jailing and torture of Chinese dissidents, and this week was criticized because Yahoo China, in which Yahoo Inc. has a stake, ran a wanted list of rioters involved in violent protests in Lhasa, Tibet.

Here’s one of the areas where Baidu is actually behind in its own market comparative to Google (unlike my previous post on how Google is so far behind in understanding China and in localizing the Chinese market).

So much for Baidu getting preferential treatment as I mentioned before as Universal, SonyBMG, and Warner are now suing Baidu for violating copyright laws.

Danwei reports on China's first online meme of 2008 - "Very yellow, very violent,". The article offers up a translation of Mai Tian's post entitled: "The Mop culture behind 'Very yellow, very violent'" - an interesting article about China's rather "mob-like" BBS culture.

if the analysts are right, everyone in China may have the Youtube plug pulled on Jan 31, and unlike the outage before, it may not come back until Youtube signs on with a state owned media group.